What if They
Let YOU Run the Hubble?
こ
のページのメインコンテンツは英語で書かれています。
What if They Let YOU Run the Hubble?
It is probably the dream of any
amateur astronomer to be able to be the boss of one of
the great multi million dollar telescopes even if it was
just for one hour or for a few shots. Sure, we can
have a lot of fun with our binoculars. And as we
improve our personal equipment set, we get better and
better at pinpointing what we want to see in the
sky.
But there is only so far we can
go within the constraints of a family budget in building
the perfect telescopic operation. Probably the
next level then is to work together with others in your
astronomy club. By pooling our resources, we can
make more progress both in acquiring much more
sophisticated equipment and in synchronizing our
telescopic operations.
All of this is good and its fun
to tweak it and play with it always finding
improvements. But when we are sitting back and
dreaming, it's those big institutional size telescopes
that really grab our interest. Maybe you have had
a chance to visit one at Kitt Peak, Arizona, Mauna Kea,
Hawaii, Palomar Mountain, California or Mt. Locke, Texas
to name just a few and as you walked around jaw dropped
to your shoes, you thought, maybe if I could just run it
for an hour, how awesome would that be?
The good news is that while these
huge observatories are not going to let you come in and
turn the gears of the mightiest telescopes yourself,
many of them will perform specific observations for you
and allow you to bee through their eyes・via the internet
for that short observation. This is a powerful
option for an amateur astronomer and one you want to
prepare for carefully. Here is what you
do・
1. Begin compiling a list of
the great telescopes of the world, their locations and
how to contact them. Google will help you with
finding lists of these observatories to contact by
pointing you to specific directory sites like http://astro.nineplanets.org/bigeyes.html
2. You can start by
submitting your request to a specific observatory.
Now here is where you have to do your homework. If
you have a specific celestial event you wish to observe,
there will be particular telescopes around the globe
that will be in the best position to get those shots for
you. So study up and find just the right telescope
and when the perfect moment for that observation would
occur. Get out ahead of this homework as you need
to submit your request in plenty of time for it to go
through approval and for them to get back to you and to
interact with you to nail down what you are going to
have them look at.
3. There are two ways you
can direct the operators of the telescopes. You
can give them specific coordinates to focus on and a
specific time frame to perform the observation.
The other way is to give them a star, a planet or a
particular star system to observe and let them figure
out the coordinates. That might be easier because
you know what you want to see.
4. Now you sit back and wait
for the email that the observation is done. You
will not be able to watch them do the observation
dynamically. That would be nice but it just isn't
possible yet. These are telescopes, not web
cams. But they will post the pictures from your
observation on a particular web location and email the
results to you for study.
It's pretty cool, free and
customized to what you requested. And you can brag
to your friends as you make color copies of your shots
that you had Kitt Peak do these up for you
personally. And you would not be
lying.
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