Observational Astronomy (308)

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These notes are brief summaries and links for the in-class content for the Monday class meetings of the Fall Semester 2019.


Week 1 (August 19)

Week 2 (August 26)

  • What we observe
    • Position and celestial coordinates
    • Flux and magnitude
  • What we infer
    • Distance
    • Size
    • Luminosity
    • Composition
    • Evolution
  • Useful tools for access to data


Week 3 (September 2)

  • Labor Day holiday


Week 4 (September 9)

  • Telescopes
    • Basic concepts of optical telescope design
    • Light gathering function
    • Focal plane scale
    • Angular resolution and point spread function
    • Detectors and filters
  • Visit to the Planetarium
    • Solar projection telescope
    • Solar imaging in hydrogen alpha light


Week 5 (September 16)

  • Telescopes continued from last week as needed


Week 6 (September 23)

  • Clear weather tonight possible (Monday) and the coming weekend
  • Roundtable discussion about project ideas (bring your own) such as
    • Jupiter imaging (must be done soon)
    • Bright star photometry (examples are some TESS candidates and zeta Andromedae now)
    • Use of latest CMOS color sensors for photometry
    • Other TESS candidates (TESS is currently observing the northern sky)
    • Variable stars in the TESS public data
    • Comets http://www.aerith.net/comet/weekly/current.html
    • Supernovae http://www.rochesterastronomy.org/supernova.html
    • Anything in Orion (visible after midnight now)
    • Geosynchronous (GEO) satellites (where, when, optical variability)
    • Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites (wide field camera, untracked)
    • Near-Earth objects
    • Mercury transit on November 11 (with an exoplanet transit at night backup)
    • Other selected targets in either hemisphere, your choice

To continue this week and next as time allows


Week 7 (September 30)

  • Continued discussion of research and optical astronomy data


Week 8 (October 7)

  • Fall break


Week 9 (October 14)

  • Final organization of research topics (revised 2019-10-21)
    • Natalie Warning - Geosynchronous satellites
    • Shawn Knabel, Dominic Smith, Travis Waters - TESS exoplanets
    • Michael Turner - TESS and expolanets
    • Christopher Anderson - Orion star formation
    • Benjamin Kantardzic- TESS and exoplanets
    • Dylan Scharff - Supernovae


  • Exoplanet transit photometry of a TESS candidate
    • Full frame images
    • Candidates
    • Validation - night of October 13, 2019


Week 10 (October 21)

  • Research by topic
    • TESS and exoplanets
      • Travis Waters, Shawn Knabel, Dominic Smith, Michael Turner, Ben Kantardzic
    • Supernovae
      • Dylan Scharff
    • Orion star formation
      • Chris Andersen
    • Geosynchronous satellites
      • Natalie Warning
  • This week at Moore Observatory
    • Tuesday night likely clear
    • Wednesday night long range partly cloudy
    • Sunday night long range favorable
  • Noise in signals
    • Gaussian random processes, photons, and Poisson noise
    • Assessing sources of systematic error and noise in photometry


Week 11 (October 28)

  • Stellar spectra
  • Radial velocities


Week 12 (November 4)

  • Latest data on GEO satellites and TESS targets
  • Determining planetary mass from spectra


Week 13 (November 11)

  • Transit of Mercury!!
    • Viewing in the planetarium garden area if it is clear
    • See Viewing guide


Week 14 (November 18)

If time available --

  • High spatial resolution imaging
    • Lucky imaging
    • Adaptive optics
    • Role in exoplanet discovery
    • Interferometry present and future


Week 15 (November 25)

  • Presentations of projects