Twitter Moonwatch competition

As part of Twitter Moonwatch  we have been working with our UK education partner Faulkes Telescope Project and the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (UK national node), to bring a competition to win an hour observing on Faulkes Telescope South .

We have four blocks of 1 hour each to give away for FREE between 0930 and 1830 GMT on Tuesday 27 October 2009 (observing time is normally only available to UK schools).

To win this amazing prize just send us a tweet to @astronomy2009uk and include in your tweet what object you’d most like to image and why. Include the hashtags #moonwatch and #lcogtLas Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network.

The competition is open until  noon on Friday 23 October 2009, and winners will be announced that afternoon. If you are a winner you will be set up with an account on the Faulkes Telescope South, and from there you can select what observing time suits you best. Please note that this competition is only open to residents of the UK.

If you are not familiar with the micro-blogging website, Twitter, why not take this opportunity to delve a bit further. It is fast becoming a great way to stay informed of news in bite-sized pieces (less than 140 characters), with NASA, ESA and many other organizations broadcasting latest news this way (including us, http://twitter.com/lcogt ).

Please note that, because the telescope you’ll be controlling is BIG, you are unable to image very bright objects such as the Moon, planets and bright stars. Your imaging list will need to be limited to nebulae, galaxies, clusters etc