DARK ...
Dudley Astrophotography Research (K)nights

Are you interested in taking photos of celestial objects? Would you like to try your hand at research, and maybe find new planets?

We are starting a group for teens & adults who would like to work together to learn the digital imaging techniques that are central to many astronomy projects. Whether you want to take nice photos with a digital camera, or do CCD imaging through a telescope, this group will get you started. We are looking for mentors, as well as novices.

In addition to the imaging, we have chosen a basic variable star research project which can be worked on by members of the group.

 

CCD Imaging Workshops with Harvey Patashnick: TBA

10 Star Training Tutorial - naked eye variable star observation.

http://www.koronisfamily.com - plot the lightcurves of the Koronis family of asteroids

 

AAVSO Citizen Sky Project

We will be participating in this program of the American Association of Variable Star Observers:

Citizen Sky is a citizen science project providing you with a chance to do real scientific research. We are seeking to understand a star that has been a mystery to scientists for many years. This star is epsilon Aurigae, a very interesting, very bright star located in the constellation Auriga, the charioteer. This star is bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye even in the most light-polluted cities, and it is visible every fall, winter, and spring.

Epsilon Aurigae is a variable star—this means it changes in brightness over time.  Collecting data on these changes can help us understand the star.  There are many types of variables - epsilon Aurigae is an eclipsing variable. (We have a whole page dedicated to more information about epsilon Aurigae, the "star" of our project). The change in brightness that this star undergoes is called an eclipse (a process of fading and coming back to its usual brightness.)  This process takes over 600 days.  One of the things that makes epsilon Aurigae so interesting is that it only has an eclipse once every 27.1 years.

Information on submitting observations: http://www.aavso.org/observing/submit/

Special Notice archive: http://www.aavso.org/publications/specialnotice/

 

 

Links

Astronomy.fm free offer to Global-Rent-a-Scope. http://astronomy.fm/