This is my first post in this forum. I am a retired physicist living in Nova Scotia, Canada at lattitude 45⁰N. In 1973 I was an undergraduate in the Astronomy Department at the University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario, CA) but switched over to physics upon my returning to university studies in 1979 at Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia, CA).
I purchased a Celestron Origin in July 2024 to search the heavens for anomalies of all kinds. To date, I have logged hundreds of hours imaging 1.27⁰ x 0.85⁰ star fields, including many centred on variable stars. In fact, I create custom finder charts complete with well documented comparison stars, galaxies (if any in the FOV), and especially unknown objects of interest.
You can see some of my research on my website at https://celestronorigin.space. A downloadable pdf file for AF Cygni is there, along with FOV tracking images for Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS), and a gallery of images for the last partial lunar eclipse. There will be many more variable FOV finder charts uploaded in the days and weeks to come.
Looking forward to reading your posts in several topic areas in this forum. I’m especially interested in T CrB as many of you are (I capture it whenever we have clear skies).
Cheers,
Dennis Jones
Kempt Shore, Nova Scotia, Canada
On the beautiful Bay of Fundy
Hi Dennis,
I would encourage you to extract the photometry from the underlying FITS images and submit them to the AAVSO’s database. This will make your data much more accessible by researchers (very few will download your images and process them if an already reduced data format is available).
Brian
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Hi Brian,
I did consider that, however, AAVSO already has plenty of contributors uploading their measurements. What I am interested in is the creation of novel techniques for use specifically with Origin, variables being just one of several projects I am working on. Like many other professionals, I am analyzing the AAVSO data for use in my research.
Cheers, Dennis
PS. For the time being, I will restrict my posts on variables to the forum’s general discussion topic for the few who are interested in what I am up to with Origin.
Hi Dennis,
That sounds like a lot of fun. From our experience, most of the smart telescopes on the market today have very similar performance characteristics to DSLR cameras. John Hoot has been a big proponent of using RGB cameras for scientific purposes since his first article on DSLR photometry in 2007. From 2010 - 2012, I lead a small team that investigated how far you could push these devices and it turns out they produce pretty good photometry.
In case you are interested, we have a small group developing an application to make photometry from smart telescopes much easier. I’d be happy to let them know if you are interested in participating.
Brian
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Please let them know I am interested. Thank you.
Dennis