Dr John Nunn - Stars in His Eyes

GRAS Driver - Dr John Nunn

Have you ever noticed how children often look at the sky, whereas adults rarely do? Certainly my fascination with the sky started at an early age, although initially my interest focussed on the weather rather than the stars. It is said that the English are fascinated by the weather, and it’s true that the changeable English climate, with its frequent and unpredictable variations, provides plenty to talk about. When I was six years old I was already spending a lot of time watching the clouds drifting in the London sky, so for Christmas my parents presented me with a barometer.

I still have the notebook which I kept for several months in 1962, in which I carefully recorded the wind, temperature and barometric pressure every day - climate change researchers may contact me if they wish :)

1955 - I’m the little one.Given my interest in the sky, it was perhaps only natural that when my older brother David took an interest in astronomy, I followed in his wake. The night sky in London was no better for astronomy then than it is now. These days there is more light pollution, but in the early 1960s the air pollution in London was dreadful. The infamous London smogs often struck in the winter, and when that happened you not only couldn’t see the stars, you couldn’t see the sun either.

Daytime was marked only by a general overall brightening of the environment without any particular source, and when the sun set nothing whatsoever was visible above. The impact of these smogs was so serious that anti-pollution laws were established, which over a period of years dramatically improved the air quality in London. When there was no smog you could see the Moon, the planets and a few stars. However, for the first time in history there was something else to see in the sky - artificial satellites.

These days communication satellites are small, efficient and high up in stationary orbit, so are invisible to the naked eye. Apart from the ISS and the occasional Iridium flare, present-day satellites are unspectacular when viewed from the ground. But back in the early 1960s the Echo 2 satellite, which was just a large metal-coated balloon, was put in a polar orbit and was clearly visible over the whole Earth. This obvious sign of human activity in space caused a lot of people (even adults!) to look at the night sky with a renewed interest and probably stimulated astronomical interest in the Nunn family.

At some point my brother acquired a rather poor-quality 60mm refractor. It was quite pleasant to look at the Pleiades through this modest instrument, but although David claimed to be able to see the Andromeda galaxy with it, I was never able to definitely confirm this. In London, the opportunities for visual astronomy were limited, but once or twice a year my family went camping in the countryside far away from urban light pollution.

Perhaps for some people camping is a pleasant experience, enabling them to appreciate the beauties of nature and so on, but I hated it and the only thing I learnt was how pleasant it is to stay in a comfortable hotel. It also altered my view of history, since hitherto I had felt that the wheel was the most significant human invention, but then I realised that it was actually the flush toilet. So far as I was concerned, the only positive feature of camping was the opportunity to see the night sky in its full glory.

I spent hours lying on my back looking up at the sky, enjoying the Milky Way (which hitherto I had only read about and never actually seen), the moving beacons of the satellites and the occasional flash of a meteor. Round about this time I received a couple of astronomy books as presents and soon became relatively knowledgeable on the subject.

It is said that all good things come to an end, and so it was with my early interest in astronomy. I had shown some talent in mathematics and was also keen on chess, and these two subjects gradually took up more and more of my time.

Early chess successThe difficulties of doing practical astronomy in London and the lack of a suitable telescope also tended to dampen my enthusiasm. However, I continued to follow developments in astronomy with some interest. In the mid 1960s, one of the main mysteries in astronomy concerned the redshift of quasars. If this was due to their great distance then their enormous energy output was hard to explain, but if they were close by then some unknown mechanism must be responsible for the redshift. Now that black holes are known to have a huge energy output, the cosmological origin of quasar redshifts is generally accepted, but at the time the whole subject was hotly debated.

At that time astronomy was going through a kind of revolution and I well remember the excitement when the first pulsar was discovered in 1967, ushering in a whole new branch of the subject. The past half-century has been an exciting age for astronomy, with new developments in all areas, from the use of space probes to further planetary astronomy to the giant telescopes which have probed back almost to the Big Bang itself (and that was another controversial subject in its time).

While all this was happening, my own career was developing. In 1970 I went to Oxford to study mathematics, but central Oxford was no better for astronomy than London. In the vacations, I was playing in as many chess tournaments as possible, which not only improved my chess but also helped fund my university studies.

At any rate it was more fun than traditional student holiday jobs! My big chess breakthrough came  at the end of 1974, when I won the European Junior Championship, thereby automatically gaining the title of International Master. After that my chess and mathematics careers continued in parallel, and in 1978 I gained both my doctorate and my Grandmaster title.

I took up a lecturing job at Oxford, but in 1981 I left the academic world to become a professional chess player. This proved a good decision as it gave me more time to study chess, and in the 1980s I achieved several good results, including winning three individual gold medals in the 1984 Chess Olympiad. My peak period was 1989-91, when I was ranked in the world top ten and won a number of top-level tournaments, including two consecutive victories in the famous event at Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands.

However, it’s difficult to continue playing at the same level indefinitely and in the mid-1990s my life started to change again. Foreseeing the decline of my playing career, I and two friends set up a chess publishing company, Gambit Publications. This company continues to operate today and is recognised as a leading publisher of high-quality chess books.

In 1995 I married Petra Fink, a German chess player, and in 1998 we had a son, Michael. I started to play fewer individual events, preferring instead team chess, and I was part of the successful Lübeck team which won the German chess Bundesliga in 2001, 2002 and 2003. At the end of the 2002/3 Bundesliga season I more or less retired from competitive chess and started to look around for other activities. At one time I had been interested in chess problems and now I decided to take up problem solving, a slightly esoteric branch of chess. This turned out successfully and I have since won the World Chess Problem Solving Championship three times, in 2004, 2007 and 2010, in addition to the European and British solving titles.

Winning Championship in 2010At the same time I decided to revive my boyhood interest in practical astronomy, which had lain dormant for more than 35 years. I hadn’t looked at amateur telescopes in all that time and I was amazed by what was available. GoTo seemed like magic, and a world away from the small refractor which I had used so many years before.

I bought a Meade EXT-125 and spent a long time in the evenings scanning the sky. I don’t have anywhere to set up a telescope permanently, and in many ways the ETX was an excellent scope since it was light enough to set up easily in the evening, spend an hour or two observing, and then pack away quickly. I no longer lived in London, but the area of Surrey I had moved to is heavily populated and the light pollution remains a major problem.

After a time I became dissatisfied with what I could do with the ETX, so I bought a 10 inch Meade LX200-GPS. The disadvantage of this was that it was too heavy for me to set up on my own, so I required Petra’s help at the beginning and end of each observing session. Fortunately my marriage survived this acquisition, even when I insisted on setting it up at 2 a.m. to observe a grazing occultation of Saturn by the Moon (which was memorable). Thank you, Petra!

After a couple of years I felt that I had looked at everything of interest that could reasonably be seen with the LX200, at least from my location, and I started to wonder about astrophotography.

John, Christian and friendAt the same time I was becoming interested in terrestrial photography and I decided to try attaching my Canon DSLR to the LX200. There was quite a learning curve involved here, and I did manage to take a few pictures of brighter objects, but using the LX200 in AltAz mode wasn’t ideal for astrophotography. The length of time taken to set everything up was awkward and on top of that the light pollution became suddenly much more obvious. My best results with the Meade came when I bought a 400mm telephoto lens and simply bolted the camera and lens to the top of the telescope, which was used solely for tracking. However, only larger objects could be imaged using this method, and the results were still not very impressive.

My astronomical interests took an interesting turn when Frederic Friedel of ChessBase put me in touch with Christian Sasse, who readers will know as one of the motivating forces at GRAS. This was another revelation for me. Suddenly I had access to excellent equipment but, as I soon discovered, there was another learning curve involved. Fortunately, thanks to Christian’s patient help, and the assistance of others at GRAS such as Pete and Arnie.

I soon grasped the concepts involved, and while my skill hardly matches those of astrophotography experts, I was able to produce images which, at any rate, I enjoyed. The person most delighted with this development was of course the long-suffering Petra, who could relax in the evenings. I need not give any examples of these images, as many can be found in the GRAS gallery. Suffice to say that astronomy has given me a great deal of pleasure over the years and has been an important part of my life.

John Nunn

Dr Gordon Mandell

The ‘Right Stuff’ Generation

I can remember in elementary school, listening to the Mercury launches with a transistor radio held to my ear.  What a thrill.  By the time Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon I was in high school having never lost my enthusiasm for astronomy and space exploration.

Our high school was fortunate to have an observatory with a rotating dome and an Alvan Clark refractor that had been donated to the school years before.  I had my first view of Saturn through that telescope.

I joined the local astronomy club and with the help of several members built a Newtonian telescope with an eight inch mirror that I ground myself. The tube was constructed out of an aluminum liner around which cloth soaked in a plastic resin was applied.  The mount was fashioned from plumber’s pipe and the counterweight was an old coffee can filled with lead.  Crude but what marvelous wonders I could see with that instrument. I can still remember the eerie, greenish tint of the Orion Nebula.  Unfortunately I had to put the reflector away for awhile. 

There was college, medical school and residency.  I met my wife and we were married while I was a medical resident.  Then came the kids.  Work and family responsibilities didn’t leave much time for astronomy.  After 20 years in my parent’s basement the Newtonian had fallen into disrepair.  Could my old friend be resuscitated? I retrieved what was left of the telescope, determined to use it again.  Fortunately the mirror was in good shape, it just needed a new beryllium facelift. The secondary mirror and helical focuser were fine.  Sadly the tube and mount were DOA (dead-on-arrival).  I found instructions in one of the astronomical magazines how to build a Dobsonian mount.  Amazing!  Some wood, a little Teflon® and I was back in business. 

My kids and I used that scope for 10 years.  I taught my sons the constellations and basic astronomy.  We spent many enjoyable nights together with the telescope.  Kids grow up and become interested in other things.  I was at a point in my life that I had more time (and more money) and decided to retire the old reflector and purchase a new telescope and mount with the purpose of using it for astrophotography. 

That was six years ago.  I purchased a five inch refractor and a computer-controlled mount that I still use.  Approximately one year later I captured my first image, M13 globular cluster in Hercules using an off-the-shelf digital camera and from my own driveway.  Since that time I have acquired a permanent, roll-off roof observatory located off our back deck and have clocked many hours under the stars and in front of a computer screen. 

Despite continued enthusiasm and the acquisition of great equipment, I was facing a dilemma.  The community where my  permanent observatory is located had grown considerably and so had the number of businesses, homes, post lamps and street lights.  The light pollution had gotten to the point where the only serious astrophotography I could accomplish from home was narrowband imaging; and I wanted more.  I had heard about remote astrophotography but was filled with uncertainty.  I really enjoyed using my own equipment and sharing astrophotographs captured from my own back yard. 

I believe that there is no better way to learn this hobby than to use one’s own equipment, but there were other problems at home.  Pittsburgh only has 59 sunny days (and clear nights) per year.  And who wants to remove snow off the roof of the observatory in the middle of Winter?  GRAS came to my rescue. 

Great equipment, great customer support and clear, dark nights galore.  Since joining GRAS in September 2010, I have found that there aren’t many nights that I can’t image (if I want to).  The sky conditions are outstanding and how wonderful it is to photograph targets that would otherwise not be possible from my location.  There’s something to be said about taking images from one’s own backyard but after successfully executing a scripted plan at a GRAS facility and downloading and processing the data, the images are mine. 

When I see the preview images being displayed on my monitor, I get the same thrill I got  listening to the Mercury launches all those years ago.  Since joining GRAS, I am rediscovering astronomy; only this time from the comfort of my own study.

G.Mandell

You can find many of Gordon’s finest images in our Gallery

 

Master Ype de Lang

Addicted to the Cosmos

My name is Ype de Lang, I live in Heerhugowaard the Netherlands. http://titans-cctv-observatory.nl

I have been interested in astronomy since my early childhood (at age 12 in 1970). My parents bought me my first telescope from an army Thrift-Store for my birthday. Little as it was, magnifying 40x I rebuild it to 120x by changing the order of the lenses in the standard eyepiece. My dad and I purchased material to built a tripod and this was the beginning of my career in astronomy.

As a child I never went to sleep immediately when my mother took me to bed. late at night, I opened my bedroom window to look at the stars and listen with my short wave radio to the beep and blip sounds from the cosmos. I even build my own radio-telescope dish and connected this to the short wave radio to hear where these bleeps came from.

When I was older I got a 60mm refractor from my sister and took the microscope from my brother because he did not use it, to do research. Years later I got a 4 1/2 inch Newtonian from my parents, again on my birthday.

The cosmos has always fascinated me, especially when I discovered that both the macro-cosmos as the micro-cosmos apply the same laws of physics.

In 1976 I purchased my first big telescope, an 8 inch Dynamax SCT from Criterion and made years later my first CCD images with this scope. I also built a 6 inch newton for my friend. Now my main telescope is a 10 inch MEADE SCT and started to built my own roll-off-roof observatory a few years ago. I built it all by myself with no help whatsoever because I wanted that.

I’m an autodidact and my philosophy is to use as few shots as possible and get the most out of this images with my own developed processing technics. We have to deal with many problems as astrophotographer in the Netherlands but because of this problems I’m looking for solutions that do more advanced than that you do not have those problems. I always used low-budget equipment but with great results, how would it be if I would have quality instruments that I never can afford.

My dream come true, last year in October 2010 I got older issues of Sky & Telescopes magazine from my astro-friend who lives in Fullerton CA. I read an article about Web Based Observatories and this caught my attention. I studied this article and I liked two Web Based Observatories very much (Lightbuckets and GRAS) because you are in full command. I Purchased points for Lightbuckets, but could not do anything easily. I would try to image 103p/Hartley-2 during my holiday in the USA, but my internet connection was not optimal. When I was back at home in the Netherlands I signed up for a free 60 min drive with GRAS on G3.

I was at work doing my day job and stopped for a break and activated my iPhone 3GS and imaged my first picture of 103p/Hartley-2, wow, this is great. All I had to log in and enter the RA and Dec coordinates and the required exposure time and then click on the “Acquire Image” button. I could see the results direct on my iPhone 3GS. I did the same on another day and imaged M33.

I like the possibility of using equipment in north and south latitudes at dark sites with a command from your mobile phone wherever you are in the world, you have always your world-observatory in your pocket. GRAS is easy and direct to use, and you are in the heat of the explosion when something happens with GRAS target alerts, this is awesome. That’s why GRAS is my favorite.

I became more experienced in using the remote control telescopes with my iPhone 3GS. I like the real-time support that GRAS can give you via Email or Skype. On a rare occasion I logged-in when I was at home and had a problem, I emailed support with my question. I went to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and came back to my computer and notice that support has mailed me back with a answer, they would always be there to make the necessary adjustments to the system and get me back on track.

I see GRAS not as a replacement of my own observatory but as an expansion to get the results I want because my interest has broadened to include asteroid and comet discovery, penetrate deeper into the cosmos and adding more real science. I Joined also the Zooniverse. The Zooniverse is home to the Internet’s largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects. Thanks to GRAS I made a color image of asteroid Scheila-596 outburst, I combined the results of two great GRAS-scopes (G3-G11). There will also be a 17 inch Planewave Extended Red telescope available soon, Wow…Give me the tools and I get the results, thanks GRAS for my worldwide observatory.

My advise for new drivers: Use the darkside of the sky, escape your limits with GRAS.

Yoda (C) Lucasfilm - Art by Ype de Lang

Dr Carl Tubbs, MD, GRAS Driver.

“Will do Eye Surgery for Telescope Time”

Astrophotography provides a myriad of pleasures and tribulations, from the management of the peculiar and unpredictable nuances of mount mechanics, to the planning and executing therein of a night’s observation, and then finally enjoying the plethora of arts involved in making a representation of the sky that the human eye can finally appreciate in its own terms. As an Ophthalmologist, I find challenges in each of these, and remain awed by what a simple digital camera can show as compared to my personal ophthalmic “cameras” with their little exit pupils and scotopic retinas. Wouldn’t it be great if the eye could integrate light?

Astronomy has only become more of a personal passion over the past year or two, as I was forced to retire from my previous love- Triathlon, but the night sky has always remained a quieting partner, even as our  local semi-rural community has caused it to fade slowly from its increasing light domes.

Learning the sky’s anatomy has been a slow endeavor, but now, teaching friends and students what one can see with averted gaze and even simple binoculars remains a treat; it is surprising how little most people know about the sky, yet how interested they can become when they “see”.

GRAS was actually a gift from my mostly understanding spouse, who I believe became somewhat sleep deprived from my travels in and out of the sliding door to the back deck in cold weather. I’m often torn between using my system at home and running a session on GRAS, but the latter systems are for the most part better behaved than my own, so I now have the pleasure of imaging with GRAS while fiddling with the home setup, obtaining different data and results.

As a beginner of two years, there is still much to learn, and I would encourage anyone interested in imaging to try GRAS as a relatively easy way to enter the imaging arena.  Arnie and Pete are very supportive.

So far, “pretty pictures” have been keeping me busy, but after visiting with Dr. Wiley, I’m learning about variables, and hope to try my hand at adding more to real science in the future.  We’re limited where we live with weather and clouds; the opportunity to catch bits of sky using equipment in north and south latitudes at dark sites really makes a difference.

Is there a better example of art, science and religion than one can find intertwined within astronomy?  We are fortunate indeed to live in a time when our equipment allows us to see increasingly farther away to learn not only more of our origins, but about ourselves and our limitations as well.

Here’s to looking and driving back in time, while maintaining a healthy curiosity.

Iakovos Strikis - A Grecian Astronomer

GRAS Driver : Iakovos Strikis

Hellenic Amateur Astronomy Association, Elizabeth Observatory of Athens.

The ancient Greeks were credited with major discoveries in astronomy. Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 B.C.) was first to propose that the earth spun on its axis and orbited around the sun. These ideas were not accepted for 1800 years when Copernicus further developed this theory.

Hipparches (200 B.C.)  discovered the constants of the equinoxes and the length of a year.

Anaxagoras discovered that the moon reflected sunlight, not producing its own light and discovered the causes of eclipses.

Thales of Miletus, was able to predict when a solar eclipse would occur.

From present day Athens, the capital city of Greece, the atmospheric conditions are far from ideal for observing the stars and it gets even worse as the years go by, it is worth mentioning here that in 1999 I was able to observe a 4.5 mag star at zenith but now I only see 3.8 mag stars. This might not seem a big difference but it really means many thousand of stars less.

I started to observe the night sky in early 1998 and I got my first telescope one year later. It was only a 60mm refractor f/750mm that I used like it was made from gold. At this time there were only two amateur astronomy clubs in the whole country and it was really difficult to come in contact with them or other experienced amateur astronomers around Greece.

Both of those astronomy clubs were made and had as a main target the “stargazing” and the “pretty picture imaging”. In 2000 I met Iakovos Stellas who is a dedicated planetary observer and one of the most experienced in analysis of visual planetary observations.

With Mr. Stellas and another friend, Maravelias Grigoris, we started to observe Venus visually and made drawings of the planet for a few months. After that we sent all our drawings to the coordinator of Venus/Mercury section of the B.A.A. Mr Robert Steele. After that I started to talk with Mr. Steele about visual observing of the planets.

With the help of Mr. Stellas I started to observe visually the main planets of our solar system  such as Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Saturn. In time I started to understand better the planetary observing techniques and the nature of the telescopes.

In 2003 I got my baby scope, it was a Celestron 6” f/1200mm Achromatic refractor that revealed me the beauty of Mars.

After that I came to the “Digital Age” by starting using a well known webcam the “ToUcam Pro II” to image Jupiter and Saturn. A whole new universe was revealed to me by that small camera. From 2004 and until now I have never stopped to image the universe always in a way not only to produce “pretty pictures” but to make observations useful in many different fields of Astronomy.

Variable Stars, our Sun and our small Planetary System are the fields that I mostly spend my time, but my main activity is to observe and study the Total Solar Eclipses, from 1999 until now I have observed five Total Solar Eclipses.

More about my Astronomy and Photography job please visit the following links:

www.hellas-astro.gr

www.elobs.weebly.com

www.dailysolar.weebly.com

www.photogreece.weebly.com

GRAS Hellas Site



Iakovos Strikis is a professional photographer and a GRAS Driver. Now with the freedom to escape the light pollution of Athens and able to explore the skies from his apartment in the city.

Thank you Iakovos

Norman Falla - Asteroid Hunter

Norman’s Own Story of Discovery

I live in the outer suburbs of London, England and I recently retired from the PRA Coatings Technology Centre where I had spent nearly 40 years on work involving research, analysis and testing of paint and other surface coatings. My specialist field was analytical spectroscopy.

I have my own telescope (an Orion Optics 300 mm Newtonian) which I have used mainly for lunar and planetary imaging and in recent years my interest has broadened to include asteroid discovery. My problem was that the light pollution levels of suburban London made it difficult for me to reach the magnitude 19 levels at which most new discoveries are made.  

A breakthrough came when an internet search took me to this page on Andrew Lowe’s website in which he describes how he had overcome the problems of imaging from a large cold Canadian city by using the Global Rent-a-Scope (GRAS) resource.

I emailed Andrew for further information and received what was to be the first of many helpful and informative responses to my queries. As a result of this I contacted its founder Mr Arnie Rosner of GRAS, and very shortly afterward found myself at the controls of a Takahashi Epsilon 250 mm hyperbolic flat field astrograph fitted with a SBIG ST8XE camera.

Even on my first day I began to appreciate the advantages of using professional grade equipment at a truly dark site. My home is about 120 feet above sea level and the Milky Way is rarely visible. The GRAS telescope I use is 7,300 feet up in the mountains of New Mexico at a site dark enough for the Milky Way to cast a shadow.

Left - Norman sharing intricate telescope mechanism with his grandson Alex

I found the telescope operation to be amazingly simple. All I had to log in and enter the RA and Dec coordinates and the required exposure time and then click on the “Acquire Image” button. Rock-steady tracking and crisp focussing all happened automatically and at the end of each exposure I could view the image obtained.

At the end of my observing session my images were sent to my personal file on the GRAS server from where I could download them to my own computer.

As I became more experienced in using the remote control  telescope, I realised the one great feature of the GRAS facility is the real-time support that GRAS can give you via Email or Skype. On the rare occasions when I had a problem the team would always be there to make the necessary adjustments to the system and get me back on track.

I began my search for new asteroids by first checking that I could detect and measure the positions of known ones. I used the Astrometrica software package to process my images and report the asteroid positions to the Minor Planet Center (MPC).  I am especially grateful to Gareth Williams, Associate Director of MPC, for his help and advice at this time.

During December 2008, while working to improve my measurement techniques, I noticed that my images included a moving object which did not appear to correspond with any known asteroid. Not daring to believe my luck, I reported the positions to MPC and received confirmation that it was new asteroid (designated 2008 YF31) and that I was the discoverer.

I continued searching through January and February of 2009 without success but, just as I had begun to believe that my earlier discovery had been a fluke, I was rewarded by a second discovery in March and, unbelievably, three new ones in April all in the same field of view of the GRAS remote telescope.

If you are interested in discovering asteroids then GRAS is definitely the place to be but it is important to realise that this is not the only type of work carried out there. Some users specialise in discovering supernovae, while others produce stunning images of deep sky objects.

Finally if the object you want to observe lies below the New Mexico or European horizon this is not a problem, you just log on to the GRAS site in South Australia and you will find your object high in the sky. Too Easy!

Norman Falla


Rolando Ligustri - The Comet Man

Veteran GRAS Driver Rolando Ligustri, Comet Researcher, Italy.

“My love affair with astronomy began in 1973. However it was in 1986 (the return of comet Halley) that I purchased my first serious telescope. It was with this instrument I took various pictures of deep sky objects; some of them were published in ‘l’Astronomia’ and ‘Orione’, two Italian astronomy magazines.

“In 1995 I bought my first CCD camera and with the help of two astronomers, G.Cremonese and M.Fulle I followed comet Hale Bopp with narrow band filters over the next year. These narrow band filters were centered about frequencies of 647nm and 627nm.

My research was unique in that I was the only one using these specialized filters to make observations. From 1997 I started to follow and study comets on a regular basis, producing a lot of pictures. Many of these images were published on a variety of international websites and in various international magazines (also on Sky and Telescope). A Google search on my name will retrieve about 20.000 citations about astronomy.

“In 2000 I started making photometric measurements producing hundreds of notations published on ICQ and BAA websites. During the same year I started to produce astrometric measurements that were published by the Minor Planet Center. In 2003 I joined the C.A.R.A. project http://cara.uai.it .

“In cooperation with C.A.R.A., we have produced an article regarding comet 9P (Tempel) that was published in the prestigious magazine ICARUS. Moreover I received an honorable mention and big thanks from the NASA people responsible for mission Deep Impact.

“In 1999 I was given the responsibility of the comet section of U.A.I. http://comete.uai.it On our association’s website, you can find images of more then 90 comets I captured during this time www.castfvg.it/fotoccd.htm#comete. Some of my personal goals included establishing a baseline for comet 67P. My work in this area was further confirmed by other astronomers.

“As I was a co-discoverer of some NEOCP objects I was also awarded the second place in a contest by ESA. This was in conjunction with taking pictures of the Rosetta spacecraft. This will be an example for my future work. I think I will follow various comets for the C.A.R.A. project and also to follow objects reported on NEOCP.

“For several years I had heard about a very high quality remote telescope system called ‘Global-Rent-a-scope’. Some amateur astronomers I knew used the system. Personally I was a little afraid to use this system as it sounded too complicated. So after waiting and thinking and waiting but not using it my friend Stefano Padovan, who had just become an affiliate with Global Rent-a-scope, insisted I try the GRAS-005 (Epsilon 250 in New Mexico). Wow! I discovered a new world!

“To use the different systems (equipped with state of the art telescopes mostly by Takahashi, RCOS and Planewave systems all on Paramount remote telescope mounts and SBIG- FLI CCD cameras) is really maybe…too simple. Thanks to dedicated, extremely user-friendly software, within just a few minutes you find yourself directing the telescope system to slew to the subject, center it, focus it (most of the times it is already focused) and you can start shooting. Meanwhile, while the system is automatically carrying out your instructions in the background, you can download your raw files or view a jpg preview so you can adjust the imaging session to suit your specific requirements.

“It is so unbelievable! The efficiency is truly remarkable. In just a few minutes you can do everything. No need to go out, drive a car in the cold winter, let the system cool down, center, shoot, maybe clouds roll in and spoil your session, go back home…this is much easier. Of course is different to be out in the field but sometimes when we need images and here in Europe is often cloudy, this type of an approach really helps.

“Moreover thanks to the kindness of the boss of Global rent a scope, Mr.Arnie Rosner and his support crew. we can ask anything of him. If we need a different dark or flat frame (that they are not already on the ftp server week by week) GRAS will do it for you.

“The system is continually expanding and growing bigger and bigger; in fact right now there are 7 different telescopes in New Mexico plus 4 in Australia and a new one in Spain. After that who knows? Maybe there will be even more to come.

“In conclusion it is enough to simply say the system is very good and you are able to shoot 24 hours a day all around the world.”

Rolando Ligustri

C.A.R.A. http://cara.uai.it
CAST: Circolo AStrofili Talmassons

See Rolando’s Hartley 2 image in National Geographic.