Institute of Astronomy

 

Ask an Astronomer - Telescopes and Instruments

J1950 and J2000 Epochs

Published on 23/08/2011 
Question: 
What are the epochs J1950 and J2000 when looking at objects in the sky? And what do I have to put in my telescope program?

Astronomers use different epochs to give coordinates of objects in the sky due to changes in motion due to primarily the precession of the Earth on its rotation axis. Much like a spinning top, as the Earth rotates, it's rotation axis gradually rotates as well although much slower than the daily rotation we see. Because of this precession, the positions of the stars change over time with a small motion every day. On small timescales this motion isn't noticeable however over decades it is. For this reason, astronomers update their coordinates every 50 years to make it simpler when finding objects.

Although for an object you can find coordinates in either J1950 or J2000 (the two most recent epochs), this won't actually be the correct location in the sky today. However, what your telescope program will do will take the coordinates from those epochs and then calculate what they should be today i.e. J2011 and then move your telescope there. This saves people doing things by hand and so means you can find objects with the standard coordinates quickly and easily.

As such, all you should need to do is find the coordinates of the object in either J2000 or J1950 and can then put those into your program. The program will then do the rest.

Amateur detection of Near Earth Objects

Published on 04/04/2011 
Question: 
Is it possible for an amateur astronomer to assist with detecting near-Earth asteroids or comets? If so, what would be the minimum telescopic aperture and type of photographic equipment required to conduct this kind of research?

Amateur astronomers can and do play an important part in detecting near-Earth objects. Today more than 5% of all near-Earth objects are discovered by amateurs and this proportion is on the increase. The Minor Planets Centre (http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/) based at Harvard University is the organisation responsible for cataloguing and archiving all discoveries of small bodies in the solar system and have a wealth of information to help potential amateur astronomers. The professional search programs typically use telescopes with a diameter of ~1m; LINEAR, one of the longest running and most successful programs currently has two 1m telescopes and a 0.5m telescope. When conducting searches smaller telescopes are to some extent preferred since they have a larger field of view and can image a larger area of the sky at once.

When you have your telescope, discovering asteroids is still not trivial! Because these objects are particularly faint (due to their size), the detectors being used (usually a CCD) need to be sensitive enough to be able to distinguish them from the background noise from the device. For CCDs, when they are cooled the background noise is reduced and because of this, most of the CCD detectors you can purchase for amateur astronomy today use fans to cool the CCD well below the ambient temperature.

Even with both of these, the main requirement to successfully discover asteroids and other small (and faint) objects is a dark site with good seeing (clear, still skies). Combining all of these things together means you could potentially discover some new asteroids!

Twinkling stars

Published on 28/02/2011 
Question: 
Why do stars twinkle and planets do not?

In fact, both stars and planets twinkle! The twinkling is due to the turbulent air in the Earth's atmosphere, blurring and distorting the image of the star. The twinkling therefore has more of an effect nearer to the horizon, where the light must travel through more of the densest parts of the Earth's atmosphere. You can see this for yourself! Compare the twinkling of a star near the horizon (such as Sirius), and one close to zenith (straight up). Objects such as the Sun, Moon and the planets are called extended sources, because the light is emitted from a disc. Objects such as distant stars are called point sources, because they appear to be a point as they are very far away. In fact, the light from extended sources can be thought of as many point sources spread over an area. The turbulent air in the atmosphere causes a point source to appear to move around on the sky ever so slightly. However if we spread many point sources over the face of the planet, all point sources move around, but we do not notice a change in the total light from the object.