News: Telescope News

* UPDATE ** Close encounters of the asteroid kind

atripp — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 09:15:24 -0500

Below is an animaton of 2011MD produced by Nick Howes and the CARA Team using images taken this morning from FTS. It is estimated that t asteroid is moving at 176 arcseconds/minute.

The image below shows how fast it is really moving. This is a 20 second exposure in RGB.

Close encounters of the asteroid kind

sroberts — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 08:15:17 -0500

A newly-discovered asteroid is set to pass through the Earth's neighbourhood on June 27th, venturing 23 time closer to us than the Moon.

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

More great images from the FTs

sroberts — Tue, 31 May 2011 09:24:24 -0500

Users of the Faulkes Telescopes have made some beautiful images in recent weeks - below we highlight just a few....

The edge-on spiral galaxy, NGC 4945, seen here to the left was taken by Highgate School using FTS with the colour filter for 180s. The dark dust lanes, blocking starlight from behind, are very clear to see in this beautiful image.

New SPECTRAL Camera Review by Nick Howes

atripp — Wed, 25 May 2011 04:37:48 -0500

Camera down on FTN

sroberts — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 03:11:21 -0600

We are very sorry to have to inform FT users that the camera on FTN is currently not in operation.

Earlier this week, the camera (named Merope) on FTN developed a fault, so a team from LCOGT flew over to Hawaii to fit a new camera. Unfortunately, during the installation of this new camera, there was an accident, and the new camera was damaged.

It is expected that the camera will be down until at least Wednesday 9th March UT. Parts are on their way to Santa Barbara and hopefully we will know more over the weekend or on Monday.

Is Comet Siding Spring splitting up?

atripp — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:08:32 -0500

This dramatic image, captured by Astronomy Now's Nick Howes of Comet C2007 Q3 Siding Spring on Wednesday, suggests that the comet's nucleus might be disintegrating.

Comet C2007 Q3 Siding Spring as imaged by Nick Howes using the Faulkes Telescope North on 17 March at 15:00 UT. Image details: 6 x 60s images in R,G,B filters processed in Maxim DL (DDP). The comet was positioned at RA 15 22.76 and dec +56 12.4.

Bad weather at FTS

editor — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 03:07:23 -0500

Just in case you were wondering if there was a conspiracy and FT South
was being used for top secret observations, but appearing to be
offline, here are some of the latest pictures. This latest run of bad
weather is not a hoax, as you can see the height of the Australian
winter has decorated FTS with snow!

Snow and Ice at FTN

egomez — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:51:28 -0600

Many schools have been asking why FTN is not operational because of some ice on the enclosure. To illustrate the extent of the problem, this photo was taken from one of the neighbouring buildings to FTN.

Bad weather at FTN

egomez — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:21:40 -0600

Maui is being pelted with bad weather at present.

Mark Elphick, the FTN Telescope manager, took the footage from the summit of Haleakala a few hours ago.

Sorry to everyone who is booked on the telescope for the next couple of days, it looks like the weather will be stopping observations.