Helping You Get the Most out of Faulkes Telescopes

Once you have signed up to the Faulkes Telescope Project it is our responsibility to guide you through the process of using them in a way that gives you the chance to get the most fun and positive use out of them.

There will be many differing reasons why people want to use the telescopes but all users at some point or other are new to using the telescopes, and no matter how advanced you think you are (or not as the case may be) as an observational astronomer we would still recommend that you read this section carefully and act on its advice.

Why You Should Read This Page Carefully (it won't take long!)

No matter how good you are at astronomy you don't know these telescopes in the same way that we do. Between all of the members of the FT team we have had more than enough failed images due to our own errors or misunderstandings than you have, so we know what observation procedures work and which ones don't. Your introductory letter will have told you to read the advice given on this website and we strongly suggest you do so.

Real observing and Real life

By their very nature the telescopes are highly complicated pieces of equipment. We could try to make them fool proof to use and try to guarantee that you will only ever get good images; however, if we did that you would hardly ever get to use the telescopes. For example, part of each month sees the Moon in the sky and around full Moon this interferes with some (not all) observations. If we never allowed the risk of someone taking an image where the Moon would spoil the image then we would have to keep the telescopes out of use for around 20% of the time. Similarly there are other things that can spoil observations such as thin cloud, atmospheric turbulence etc... and there is no way that we can account for all of these. This is real science afterall! Of course we have taken precautions, for example, you cannot point the telescope within 30 degrees of the Moon and you can't observe below below 25 degrees (no, we are not going to explain why here; you need to read the relevant advice so that you understand it fully).

The Quick Start Guide

Well its not quite a "quick start guide" but there are things you can do that more or less allow you to jump straight in and use the telescopes and get exciting results from using it live (in real-time mode).

Guided Tours

When you are logged in and in control of the telescope you can choose to use the Guided Tour Mode. This will present you with categories of objects that are currently observable at the telescope and you can just click one of these to select it and follow the simple procedure to get an image of that object. Of course Moonlight and cloud could interfere with your observation but these are things that are beyond your control (and ours!) and if your observing session is really bad then you can contact the Operations Centre to see if you can have the session credited back to you account.

Introductory Activities

You could jump in and try one of our Introductory Activities . These are designed to be simple in both how you use the telescope as well as simple in terms of the science behind the activities. Having said that they are simple in terms of the science, it is also true to say that many of them will contribute very well to the astronomy requirements of the National Curriculum.

Education/Research Activities

These are activities that require more thought and planning but are the cutting-edge science that the FT team are the most excited about. The results from these projects can/will be used by yourselves and professional astronomers to contribute to genuine scientific research. All of our Education/Research Projects have a professional astronomer as their Principle Scientific Advisor who ensures that the status of the projects remains at a professional research level.

More Advice and Help

Having read the information above, you should really now move on to read the information in the Advice on Using the Telescopes section, where you will find valuable information about how to go about planning your observing sessions.

A strong piece of advice we can give you is to carefully consider the exposure times for objects. If you over expose a bright object it could affect everyone who uses the telescope after you for the rest of that day. Look at this section for more advice.

Good luck, have fun and don't forget we are here to help you. There are many answers to common questions on the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.