News: Project news

FT North helps to launch BBC Stargazing Live

atripp — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:17:54 -0600

The BBC Stargazing Live series, presented by Prof. Brian Cox and comedian Dara O Briain, was launched on Saturday 14th January with a series of events taking place at the BBC Big Screens located around the UK, with FT North taking centre stage.

Image: The BBC Big screen in Cardiff shows the presenters locked away in their studio in Ealing.

FT observations help reveal unique variability in black hole system

flewis — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:38:03 -0500

An astronomer from the Faulkes Telescope Project at the University of Glamorgan has been involved in a collaboration of astronomers from all over the world studying an oddball black hole with a variety of astronomical observatories. Their results have revealed new details about this powerful object and its blazing jets.

Astronomers and schools go hunting for Snoopy – in space

atripp — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 03:29:52 -0500

Following a successful summer of asteroid hunting, a team of amateur astronomers are hoping to team up with scientists at the University of Glamorgan to search the sky for space debris, but this time it is a distinctly man-made object they are after – the Apollo 10 Lunar Module ascent stage.

Want to help hunt for asteroids?

editor — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 08:07:28 -0500

With the start of the new school year, and after what has been a monumentally successful summer for the Faulkes Telescope Project with the discovery of dozens of new asteoids in a pilot project involving summer work expetience student Hannah Blyth, which made global TV, radio and internet headlines, the "minor planet" hunting team of
Nick Howes, Giovanni Sostero and Ernesto Guido are moving the asteroid-spotting duties over to the schools.

Schoolgirl makes new discoveries with the FTs!

sroberts — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:59:37 -0500

A 6th form student from Cardiff, working on a summer work experience project at the University of Glamorgan, has helped astronomers discover over 20 new asteroids and a comet in the process of breaking up.

Dara O’Briain back on the Faulkes Telescopes

atripp — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 10:31:40 -0500

Following his use of Faulkes Telescope North as part of the BBC Stargazing Live programme in January, the Irish comedian returned to remotely control the same instrument as part of the “showmestars” live event on Twitter today (Tuesday 9th August). The event was set-up by LCOGT's Edward Gomez and Stuart Lowe, based at Cardiff University, and proved to be far more succesful than anyone anticipated!

Dara used FT North to image 3 objects – the planetary nebula M27, the spiral galaxy NGC 6946 and finally comet Garradd.

UK schools help observe new asteroids

sroberts — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 02:50:51 -0500

You know that saying about waiting for a bus, and then two come along at once…well, with a new research project being led by amateur astronomers in the UK and Italy, in this case it was 7…new asteroids

A year of discovery and exploration with the FTs

sroberts — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:47:46 -0500

Since the remarkable global news coverage which accompanied the discovery that Comet C2007/Q3 was breaking up, back in early2010, Nick Howes, Equipment consultant at Astronomy Now magazine has been working with the team at Faulkes on programs which the twin 2m telescopes can really flex their amazing muscles on.

FT discovers new asteroid!

sroberts — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 03:47:42 -0500

A team involving Astronomy Now's Nick Howes along with Italians G.Sostero and E.Guido of the CARA comet research group, recently had the opportunity to image comet 174P/Echeclus nearly simultaneously with both the 2-m Faulkes Telescopes, under excellent seeing conditions, from Haleakala (Hawaii) and Siding Spring (Australia).

The Comet's Coma

Summary of FT observing for Stargazing Live, day 2:

atripp — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 07:07:41 -0600

The weather remained poor at FT South yesterday, with high humidity meaning that only a single image was obtained from there (well done Alison Camacho!). Sadly this meant that we missed out on the chance to image Comet 10P/Tempel 2 as it passed with 2 arcminutes of the dwarf planet Eris, and also on the opportunity to try and simultaneously observe a Near Earth Asteroid and calculate its distance using the parallax effect.