As you might have seen on our social media pages – we are currently advertising for the next occurrence of our HOYS-LCO project. Thus, if you know of any schools or teachers that might be interested in taking part, please make them aware of it. The application process is quite simple.
The pupils will learn what HOYS is all about, how to take data for us with the LCO telescopes and how to make the data science ready and add to our database. They are then able to also do some small science projects with our data. Along the way, they also learn how to make nice colour images from the data taken. From next year ALL our data will be taken with the new modern wide field cameras at the 0.4m telescopes of the LCO. They provide much larger and better images than the older cameras.
The image on the top is a quickly made example from last years test data of the Pelican Nebula. The entire field is 1.9 x 1.2 degrees on the sky, but the resolution is still about one arsecond. This is a colour composite of three 120s exposures with the 0.4m telescopes in the visual, red and infrared filter. This is what can be done in less than 20min with a small telescope, modern detector, good site, and a bit of know-how (which the pupils will learn).