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Palmdale Telescope and Hands on Universe at JCU
We are building a roof top observatory at James Cook University which will
house the 36 cm (14 inch) Celestron
SCT provided by Palmdale
School District, California, USA.
This initiative is part of the Hands on Universe (HOU), a project of the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California.
This Internet capable telescope has a sister telescope at the Perth Observatory in Western Australia.
New observatory being lifted
onto the roof of the Physics and mathematics building at JCU..
Telescope enclosure in place on the Physics and Mathematics building at JCU.
The REST Camera
REST (the R eally E mbarrassingly S mall T elescope).
The REST Camera
The REST Camera is built around a SBIG ST10XMW astronomical CCD Camera. The
lens is a Canon 200 mm f/2.8 EF L series and there is a broad-band red (R) filter
in the system to standardize the wavelength coverage. The focal length
of the lens is 7.87 inches (ie 200mm), the aperture is 2.81 inches (71 mm)
and the collecting area is 6.2 square inches (4007 sq mm).
The pixel size on the CCD chip is 7.0 x 7.0 arcseconds, the field of view is
255.5 x 172.2 arcmins and the sky area covered is 44000 square arcmins (that
is to say the field of view is 4.26 x 2.87 degrees and the area covered is
12.22 square degrees).
The camera is mounted on a Celestron CG-5 GoTo mount on the roof of the Physics
and mathematics Building at JCU, Townsville, Australia. The approximate
location is Longitude 146 deg 49 min, latitude -19 deg 49 arcmin (ie south).
The REST is mounted in the REST box which has a suitcase opening door.
The REST is designed to search for planets around other stars and is used by
students in the JCU Doctor of Astronomy (DoA) and Master of Astronomy degree
programs (MoA).
Here are some REST images. These are familiar objects.
The
Large Magellanic Cloud.
The LMC is one of the nearest galaxies to our
own and is 180,000 light years distance. The largest feature is the Tarantula
Nebula, NGC 2700.
The
Sword of Orion.
This features the famous Great Nebula in Orion, M42. This
object is about 1600 light years away.
The
Great Nebula in Andromeda.
This galaxy and its companion galaxies are about 2.3 million light years away. M110 (itself a galaxy) is below and M32 (another galaxy) is above.
Recent Article 2007
A feature article on the REST camera by the staff of the JCU Centre for Astronomy and the Perth Observatory is avaiable at
http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury//36_02/transit.html
on the Mercury web page at: http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury//mercury.html
