{"id":6303392673,"date":"2015-07-03T04:03:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T04:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jimmynewland.com\/wp\/?p=6303392673"},"modified":"2015-07-03T04:25:41","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T04:25:41","slug":"las-cumbres-observatory-global-telescope-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jimmynewland.com\/wp\/2015\/07\/03\/las-cumbres-observatory-global-telescope-network\/","title":{"rendered":"Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
LCO El Paso Node – McDonald Observatory Dome<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In late June, I was a lucky participant in a workshop at McDonald Observatory as part of the University of Texas\/Sofia-EXES educational outreach program<\/a>\u00a0headed up by Dr. Keely Finkelstein<\/a>. We got to use LCOGT. The Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network<\/a> is not one, but a collection of robotic telescopes scattered around the world. One of the nodes, as they are called, is “El Paso” which is actually atop Mt Fowlkes at McDonald Observatory<\/a>. The nodes are named for the nearest major airport instead of the actual location of the telescope.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Mt. Locke from LCO Dome<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
ELP Node<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the workshop we did some\u00a0imaging with the LCO network and processed our data with the help\u00a0of some fantastic observatory staff (I’m talking about you Marc Wetzel, Judy Meyer, and Rachel Fuechsl). We also spent part of each night helping out with an observing run for Dr. Chris Sneden<\/a> and his postdoctoral fellow Dr. Monica Adamow<\/a>\u00a0using the Tull spectrograph on the 2.7m Harlan J. Smith telescope. You can see the 2.7m telescope dome from atop Mt. Fowlkes where the LCO node sits.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Mt. Locke from Mt. Fowlkes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The LCO project is all about getting data remotely. Even though we were on-site, the entire system operates on the web. There are queue scheduling options which means any site that can image your target could be tasked and there are site-specific scheduling options but if the site isn’t imaging, you’re out of luck.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Panorama of LCO 1m scope<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Truss-mounted secondary mirror and 1 meter primary mirror<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve included my processed images of an open star cluster and the heart of the North American Nebula (NGC 7000). The entire nebula takes up too big of an area for a single field-of-view to encompass. Once the network has collected your data, you as an astronomer can access the semi-reduced images taken through each filter. The data pipeline exists to save time for the astronomer. It’s up to me to build my final image from the individual exposures I directed the telescope to capture.\u00a0For those that have done some astronomical imaging using telescopes and CCD cameras, the pain of dark frames, flat-fields, bias frames and other processing is well-known. But the data pipeline LCO has put together means all I have to do is process my individual exposures to generate colored images.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Messier 18 – tri-color Bessell visual filters 45 s total exposure<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

First I used FITS Liberator<\/a> (free cross-platform download) to get the white\/black balance fixed and to convert the raw images into TIFF files. Then I used Photoshop to create the full-color images. LCO has some useful instructions on using FITS Liberator and Photoshop<\/a> available. If you don’t like my final products, feel free to take a crack at creating your own color images from my data<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
NGC 7000 (small field) tri-color IVB filters 258s total exposure<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Each node is an autonomous robot. People are on site, but mainly the system turns on, checks the weather, opens up, self-collimates, calibrates the electronics, and gets on-sky and collecting data for the network. Many of the electronic system were designed by LCO and are in use at each site.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Instrumentation including camera mounted at Cassegrain focus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
CCD Camera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The in-house systems are modular and upgradeable and the data lives in the cloud<\/a>. All the astronomer needs is a web-browser and allotted time on the network. It isn’t cheap to get access, but these are research-grade systems. I plan to use the LCO and the data gathered by it for lab work with my astronomy classes.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Closed dome slit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although time on the scopes ins’t free, the various nodes do have publicly accessible all-sky and dome cameras<\/a>. Plus much of the data collected by the network is available for the public<\/a> to access and process.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
LCO McDonald all-sky cam<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In late June, I was a lucky participant in a workshop at McDonald Observatory as part of the University of Texas\/Sofia-EXES educational outreach program\u00a0headed up by Dr. Keely Finkelstein. We got to use LCOGT. The Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network is not one, but a collection of robotic telescopes scattered around the world. One … Continue reading Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[201,91],"tags":[207,208,206,204,205,209],"class_list":["post-6303392673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lcogt","category-mcdonald-observatory","tag-astronomy","tag-astrophotography","tag-exes","tag-lcogt","tag-mcdonald-observatory","tag-robotic-telescopes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3rYuP-6SAonL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimmynewland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303392673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimmynewland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimmynewland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimmynewland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimmynewland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6303392673"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimmynewland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303392673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6303392678,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimmynewland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303392673\/revisions\/6303392678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimmynewland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6303392673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimmynewland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6303392673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimmynewland.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6303392673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}