Field of View
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Our online training has a comprehensive course that gives further details about how to go about plannng a successful observing session.
With reference to the Faulkes Telescopes the term "Field of View" (FOV) refers to how much of the sky the telescope can see. A combination of the telescope optics and the CCD camera give the FTs a FOV of 4.6 arcminutes (about 1/13th of a degree). This is a little difficult to understand in words so a few simulated images with a 4.6 arcmin field of view are shown below. In each image the square shows the area that the telescope can image.
The Moon
Andromeda Galaxy
M51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy
Saturn
M16 - The Eagle Nebula
M57 - The Ring Nebula
In each of the images above the orange/red square represents the Faulkes Telescope FOV of 4.6 arcmins. As you can see, there is a great variety of differently sized objects that can be imaged with the FTs, some of which easily fit within the FOV and others that do not (please note, the FTs will not allow you to image the Moon, the example simulated image above is for the purpose of putting the FOV in to context only).
To help in your observing session planning you should take into account the FT FOV. The FT real time interface also shows the FOV of the telescope when you are observing and many pieces of planetarium software (such as Starry Night Pro) can also be set up to show the FOV. This can help you in deciding which objects you want to obtain images of.
There are many objects that cannot be imaged with the Faulkes Telescopes that you might have originally wanted to image. You may have seen them through smaller telescopes or have seen images of these objects on the Internet or in books. At first this might be a little disappointing; objects such as the Andromeda Galaxy and the Moon are just too large to image with the FTs. In addition, the Moon is also too bright for the sort of research class telescope that you will be using with the FTs.
However, there are many interesting objects that you can image with the FTs and you will find details of these elsewhere on the FT website.
