Citizen science

gary15ie · 08-05-2019 06:57PM #1

Hey there, is anyone interested in getting a small group going and building an a robotic telescope (project panoptes) that can detect a 1% drop in brightness (transit method)

Instructions are there mainly?

Could be fun to do,

ps200306 · 09-05-2019 12:08AM

I'd be interested in the software end. Probably useless on the physical end. Have a little bit of background knowledge on transit method (OU degree).

Is Irish climate suitable for anything of this nature? I'm on a rooftop in southern Portugal right now, and would love to be able to volunteer it, but not mine to offer unfortunately. I can ask though. How big are these things?

gary15ie · 09-05-2019 09:26AM

well if you google project panoptes you get more information on it (photos of size and instructions on how to construct one)

ha its not cloudy everynight here so some nights it can work,

ps200306 · 10-05-2019 02:39AM

Ok, I rooted around online. Looks interesting ... somewhat like the SuperWASP project of a number of years back. I'm still a bit dubious about the suitability for Ireland. I don't think "clear" is enough -- the ESO defines that as transparency variations under 10%. I think you need so-called photometric skies, with variations under 2%. We'd be looking for brightness changes on the order of 0.01 magnitude.

But what do I know. I guess I could be persuaded. Alternative is focus on the software end and play with other people's collected data.

ps200306 · 10-05-2019 06:45PM

Perhaps I'm being too pessimistic ... from the science category on the Panoptes forum:

Seeing is irrelevant (our pixels are large, about 10 arcsec - seeing size, even in very bad sites, is at most 3 times smaller), so low elevation sites are OK. Dark sky is important, but any site where the nightsky background is no brighter than natural sky brightness during full moon will work well. With light pollution, we loose the fainter stars, but we still do well on the brighter stars. Then there is the clear sky fraction, which is an efficiency multiplier.

https://forum.projectpanoptes.org/t/site-requirements/232/2

ps200306 · 15-05-2019 12:54AM

The Panoptes parts list seems to be in flux at the moment. I took a look at this older version on github. Total cost is about $5,500 with the most expensive half dozen or so items making up two thirds of the cost. Looking around the web I would reckon the cost here would be about one euro per dollar, i.e. €5,500. And that's assuming getting the cameras second hand and body only on e-bay. I am taking the Rebel SL1 to be identical to Canon 100D in Europe, and Rokinon lenses to be the same as the Samyang equivalent.

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