Education Article list

How to stack FITS files with Iris

Iris is a free piece of software for Microsoft Windows that allows you to do basic data processing on astronomical data files. Sometimes you won't be able to take a long exposure (for example, there might be bright stars in the field of view which would saturate), and you have to take many shorter exposure and then stack them. This guide will run you through stacking FITS images with Iris.

How to Use Astrometrica

Asteroids are impossible to spot in single images so we need to use software to find them. To identify an asteroid, we have to catch it moving. This article will show you how to you a free piece of software called astrometrica to do this.

There are two ways to do this.

(1) You can expose the patch of sky for a sufficient amount of time so that the asteroid streaks across the image and leaves a large line.

How To View Asteroids In DS9

Opening the files in DS9

In DS9, go to File > Open and select the first FITS file you wish to open. Click ‘Ok’. You will then see a screen similar to the one here. There is no obvious image in this FITS file, and the screen is mostly black. Here, DS9 is displaying the full range of pixel values in the image, from 0 to 65,000. In order to make the image more visible, we use the ‘Scale’ option from the menu bar. Select Scale and 99%.

Outreach

One of LCOGT’s aims is to make astronomy accessible and exciting to the public. We have several ways of approaching this goal. One is by creating citizen science programs such as Agent Exoplanet, that can be accessed from anyone anywhere with an internet connection. As our network comes online, we will also have telescope observing time available to members of the public through our citizen science programs and through our partners.

Pencast gallery

As you have seen from our staff interviews, LCOGT is highly dynamic place with people working in many different areas of astronomy research, public engagement, engineering and computer science. Each pencast below gives you an interactive view a different aspect of LCOGT.

Redshift

What is Redshift?

Astronomers can learn about the motion of objects by looking at the way their color changes over time, or is different from the expected.

Santa Barbara Outreach

Our outreach program in Santa Barbara is varied and growing.  We have been involved in several opportunities including:

The Milky Way Galaxy

Structure and Composition

The galaxy we live in, called the Milky Way Galaxy, is a barred spiral galaxy composed of at least 100 billion stars. It is approximately 100,000 light years across and about 1000 light years thick. It has a central bulge that is about 10,000 light years in diameter.

Transit of Venus 2012

What is a microlensing event?

The discovery of the icy exoplanet OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb (just 5 times more massive than Earth) by the technique of gravitational microlensing provided the first observational hint that Earth-like planets are common in the Universe. The existence of this new world was revealed from a small blip in the brightness of the star, on just one night, but we will probably never be able to see it again by this method.

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