Guest Speaker: Paul Mortfield who will talk about "Hunting Exoplanets". (Hint.... We have the tools to do this at our observatory).
Paul is a computer scientist by day and astronomer by night. Paul is the current President of RASC Toronto and Director of the David Dunlop Observatory. He is a long time owner of a remote observatory located high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. His recent astronomy interests have gone beyond taking pretty pictures and now include discovery of new celestial bodies in and beyond our own galaxy.
Armchair Astronomy "Sampler"
What is that? It's a regular monthly event (check out our event calendar) that is one of the most entertaining ways to spend an evening and we want you all to get a taste of what you are missing. It also happens to be the ONLY astronomy event that happens rain or shine!
Open to the public.
Location: The ROyal Canadian Legion, 79 Hamilton St. N., Waterdown, ON
Last night's meeting was one of the best this year. Paul's presentation was excellent and most definitely planted the seeds for exoplanet hunting with our observatory facilities. All we have to do is make it happen. This is an idea that had been brandied about for over a year now and with what we saw and learned last night there seems to be no reason why we should not move forward with it. Members may remember the Board's wishlist of possible items to invest in during 2016-17 as presented by Gary Bennett at our members meeting in late 2015. One of those items was exoplanet hunting.
It would be of interest to know how many of us are ready to commit to this adventure and start putting the pieces together. The Exoplanet Hunters Subgroup, has a nice ring to it!
David
I agree wholeheartedly with David that last night's meeting was a very good one, with lots of variety, from exciting announcements to a great speaker and Armchair Astronomy. We also did not get bogged down with any one item, as that is always a fear at meetings. Short and sweet announcements, a short break and well orchestrated. And we had a good crowd that was very much engaged. Thanks Gary B. for organizing the meeting and leading us through it.
If I may comment on David's thinking regarding exoplanets, I personally will continue to hone my skills at imaging, especially deep sky objects, as I am still learning and want to get better at it. Exoplanets certainly interest me but with the small number of clear skies we get, I'm all about imaging other objects. But still good to discuss it, David.
Ed
Glad you all had fun. I sure did!
Let's get a conversation going on all areas of interest. Some astronomers love hunting for variable and/or double stars, some are astrophotography nutbars, some like building telescopes, some record the faintest galaxies and test themselves to go even fainter. The common theme seems to be that each area challenges skills and the reward is in conquering the challenge.
I think we have a few people who will want to pursue exoplanets. As demonstrated by Paul Mortfield last night, there are online resources that publish the brightness and known orbit of existing exoplanet discoveries and I think it would be fun to get an "exoplanet hunters" club going. They would be on the lookout for upcoming candidates that are very bright, high in the sky, with a reasonable transit duration. Then all you need is a clear sky. Our 2 telescopes are more than adequate and all we need is a CCD Camera. A used model without the anti-blooming feature would be suffice. Anyone care to research what cameras to hunt for?
Part of the strategic plan is to build and equip a new (3 in fact) observatory that can be operated remotely. In the mean-time, we can get started with what we have.
Who wants to be Chairman of the Exoplanet team? It would look great on your resume. Also good PR for public awareness and some may even donate to the cause!
Gary Bennett
Does Rock Mallin have a model that would work?
We should support AstroCATS exhibitors...
No, MallinCams are not contenders. Small chips (chip size and pixel count) and way too sensitive (noise), and way too much amp-glow. Paul sold his older SBIG (like 10 years old) that did not have anti-blooming but he sold it and now he's wishing he still had it! You can use anti-blooming though.
The other requirement is it needs to be a camera that can be controlled by MaximDL. It's actually MaximDL that pulls data from the images. That data is then exported into Excel to plot the curve.
I think it's safe to say that we won't be making new discoveries. It will just be fun to see if we can detect it.
I also asked about doing spectroscopy which would also be some fun science. YES to our solar system and bright stars, but measuring spectrum of an exoplanet requires really BIG telescopes. For bright objects, there is a $200 screw-in filter now.
http://www.rspec-astro.com/star-analyser/
Some possible non-antiblooming cameras are:
SBIG STT-1603ME $3995 USD
https://www.sbig.com/products/cameras/stt/stt-1603me/ (https://www.sbig.com/products/cameras/stt/stt-1603me/)
SBIG STT-3200ME $6995 USD
https://www.sbig.com/products/cameras/stt/stt-3200me/ (https://www.sbig.com/products/cameras/stt/stt-3200me/)
Both of these are fairly expensive if purchased new.
While it is of an antiblooming design, the 8300 has been used for differential photometry. $1995 USD
https://www.sbig.com/products/cameras/stf-series/stf/stf-8300m/ (https://www.sbig.com/products/cameras/stf-series/stf/stf-8300m/)
For example this camera was used to discover 17 variable stars in Vulpecula
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.03014v1 (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.03014v1)
I have attached an example light curve [can't upload the paper since it is too big but can be downloaded as well as an exoplanet light curve captured with the 8300 as well.
Chris