Published: May 15, 2005
Ground Based observations
Several observers participated in our widely disseminated call for observations. Images have been received from John Sanford, Mike Harms and Vivian Hoette. Additional images were taken in a variety of filters by Mr. Adkins' students Brielle Hinckley and Crystal Ewen through the New Mexico Skies system sponsored by TLRBSE. Lynn Rice at New Mexico Skies graciously and generously arranged for VRI filters to be available without the usual charge for exchanging filter sets by providing access to a second telescope instead of changing filter sets on the usual remote control telescope. Many other participating observers were clouded out in the days before and after the Spitzer observation. Gordon Spear reports that several observations were made by observers contributing to the AAVSO, and more are planned for the second observation.
Students have already begun reducing data for end of the school year projects. Student Darren Tyler is analyzing Mike Harms' images; Crystal Ewen and Jennifer Shankey have begun reducing data from the HOU archive provided by Vivian Hoette; and Brielle Hinckley is reducing data from her own images. Some of the NM Skies data, the AAVSO data, and the data from John Sanford may not get analyzed until Fall when new astronomy and research students are assigned the task. As of this writing there is less than 5 days of instruction left, so only projects already in progress will be completed for the school year. Some students are planning to work on data reduction through the summer. As of this writing it is too early to report a light curve or a partial SED for the target based on student reduction of contributed data. We may have something preliminary to show by next month's report.
This fall there will be a larger group of students working on data reduction.
Workshops
On May 11 Mr. Adkins did a workshop on "Space Probes in the Classroom" at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair which included a description of the Spitzer project and its progress. Over 40 people attended the workshop and it was well received.
Mr. Adkins did a workshop on the Spitzer research for the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society on June 28. A brief overview of the proposal process was made plus an update on the data itself.
Display at DVHS Planetarium
A semi-permanent exhibit showing how infrared radiation from a remote control can be detected on a webcam but not by the human eye has been co mpleted as a student project. This was one of our original objectives in the project proposal.