A part of the EU Erasmus+ Project StAnD is the observation of asteroids with the Faulkes Telescopes / The Schools Observatory.
Before you start observing asteroids, we recommend that you make yourself familiar how to observe asteroids and how to program observations with the telescopes.
Near-Earth Object Hunt with The Schools Observatory
Step 1: Go to the website of The Schools Observatory, set up your account and login.
Step 2: Click on „Things to do“ on to top of the website (after logging in!) and select „Keep Watch on Asteroids„
Step 3: Please complete this activity, especially the „Asteroid Watch Project“
Step 4: After completing the asteroid watch project, you can request your own NEO observations through Go Observing, download the data you receive, and have a go at spotting the asteroid in your own data. Please follow the instructions on the TSO website.
Selecting your own targets via the LCO-Interface (for advanced users!)
Instead of observing the selected Near Earth Objects from the list of The Schools Observatory, see above, you can also observe any asteroid of your choice.
This requires an LCO-Account. Please contact us directly in case you require this access.
The toolkit using the „basic mode“ to submit observations is available here.
To program the observation with the Faulkes Telescopes, you need to:
1) Login to LCO Observation Portal | Log in
2) Be sure that you are not using the „Basic interface“. In your personal profile, the tag „Use Basic Mode“ should not be active.
3) Cick on „submit observation“ and proceed as usual.
4) Select „1m Sinstro“ as Instrument.
5) Change Target Type from „Siderial“ to „Non-Siderial“.
6) „Scheme“ should be „MPC Minor Planet“.
7) Then enter the orbital elements. In case you are uncertain, move the mouse to the small questionmark in fromt of each field.
8) Proceed as usual.
This is also described in a detailed toolkit „Observing Asteroids with the Faulkes and LCO Robotic Telescopes“ which you can download.
Detailed toolkits how to measure asteroid positions with the Software „Astrometrica“ will be available here, soon.
Below you can download the cfg-file for the 1m telescopes for Astrometrica.
For the orbital elements required to program the observation, please follow these steps:
1) Go to this website of the Minor Planet Center.
2) Enter the asteroid name as written above as object.
3) For the „Format for elements output:“ further down, select „MPC 8-line“.
4) Then click on „get ephemerides / HTML page“ to receive the orbital elements.
When you have measured the asteroid positions within Astrometrica, please send them to astrometry @ ftp-europlanet.eu . Please do not send them directly to the Minor Planet Center. We will check the data and do it for you.
Configuration Files for Astrometrica, including:
– 1m LCO telescopes
– 2m Faulkes Telescopes