OBSERVE TOP SPRING OBJECTS
WITH A ROBOTIC TELESCOPE
Ispectrum has teamed up with the University of Bradford to
bring you one month of access to their robotic telescope, free
with this magazine.
The Bradford Robotic Telescope is located
in the best observing site in Europe,
8000ft above sea-level on the island of
Tenerife. From this prime location, this
fully-autonomous observatory takes
pictures of the night sky. Unusually
however, its main purpose isn’t academic
research. Rather, it is taking images
for members of the public, for school
children and for amateur astronomers all
over the world, who are able to request
images from the telescope via the website.
These images are scheduled automatically
and taken for you while you’re sleeping.
Log on to the website a few days later
and your very own images are waiting for
you. All the raw data collected is available
and online image processing tools are
provided to make sure you get the most
from your pictures.
What you can see
Jupiter
Galileo turned his telescope onto Jupiter
just as you can with the robotic telescope
and was able to see the bright planet
with its tiny family of moons just like the
planets going around the Sun.
The Moon
A favourite of astronomers for centuries,
take a simple image of our nearest
neighbour up close. Take detailed images
of craters and watch as the moon changes
of the lunar month.
The Hercules Globular Cluster
Global clusters are among the oldest
structures in the galaxy, around 11 billion
years old. This one is thought to contain
around 300,000 stars. Might there also be
a black hole at its centre?
The Milky Way
The Robotic Telescope comes equipped
with two wide-field cameras. The widest
is able to capture our own galaxy in all
its glory. Glowing areas of star formation
and dark obscuring dust show up clearly.
The Andromeda Galaxy
The closest large galaxy to our own,
Andromeda is on a collision course with
our own galaxy. As a result it appears
very large in the sky and makes a great
target for the mid-field camera.
The Dumbbell Nebula
This is a bright planetary nebula: the
remnants of a dying star and a peek into
the future of our own Sun. The red areas
are ionised Hydrogen and Nitrogen, with
Oxygen showing up in green.
HOW TO GET YOUR FREE MONTH’S ACCESS
1. Go to telescope.org
2. Enter the access code EUROPA
3. Try out imaging the six objects above for one month
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