Stardial: an Autonomous Astronomical Camera on the World Wide Web

McCullough, P. R.; Thakkar, Umesh

doi:10.1086/134006

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Usually the observer interaction is minimal and is often limited to controlling the camera. For example, the astronomical camera called "Stardial" delivers images of the night sky in real time (McCullough & Thakkar, 1997), and our own university houses a geomagnetic observatory to study the northern lights that includes spectacular 360° images of the night sky which can be accessed remotely (Donovan et al, 2006). There are also Internet controlled electron microscope sites such as "Bugscope" (Potter et al, 2001) and "POIT-EM" (Furuya et al, 2005), which accept and prepare mailed-in specimens for observation.…”

Section: Observationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accessible Elements: Teaching Science Online and at a Distance

2010

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We wish to express our gratitude and appreciation to those who have contributed to this book. The authors graciously gave of their time and expertise to make this book truly come alive, and were also very patient through the review and production process. Many reviewers and colleagues from around the world provided helpful comments and suggestions. The AU Press editors and designers -Erna Dominey, Peter Enman, Kathy Killoh and Natalie Olsen -demonstrated exceptional professionalism and creativity.Dietmar Kennepohl thanks his loving wife, Roberta, for help with redesigning some chapter figures and for her patience in listening to innumerable discussions around delivering science courses at a distance.Lawton Shaw thanks his wife, Tanya, for always being positive and encouraging about this project.

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Section: Observationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accessible Elements: Teaching Science Online and at a Distance

2010

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“…The Stardial project (McCullough & Thakkar 1997), on the other hand, does save all of its images, but does not perform any source detection or measurement. Since the Mark III and Stardial surveys share a very large area on the sky (about 1400 deg2 in a strip from decl.…”

Section: Variable Starsmentioning

confidence: 99%

TASS Mark III Photometric Survey of the Celestial Equator

Richmond¹,

Droege²,

Gombert³

et al. 2000

PUBL ASTRON SOC PAC

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ABSTRACT. The Amateur Sky Survey (TASS) is a loose confederation of amateur and professional astronomers. We describe the design and construction of our Mark III system, a set of wide-Ðeld drift-scan CCD cameras which monitor the celestial equator down to 13th magnitude in several passbands. We explain the methods by which images are gathered, processed, and reduced into lists of stellar positions and magnitudes. Over the period 1996 October to 1998 November, we compiled a large database of photometric measurements. One of our results is the tenxcat catalog, which contains measurements on the standard Johnson-Cousins system for 367,241 stars ; it contains links to the light curves of these stars as well.

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“…Stardial (McCullough & Thakkar 1997) scans a strip of sky automatically and places images on the internet in near-real time. The Amateur Sky Survey (TASS; Richmond 1997;Richmond et al 1998) has been scanning the celestial equator with CCD cameras since 1996.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Continuous Record of the Sky

Nemiroff

Rafert

1999

PUBL ASTRON SOC PAC

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It is currently feasible to start a continuous digital record of the entire sky sensitive to any visual magnitude brighter than 15 each night. Such a record could be created with a modest array of small telescopes, which collectively generate no more than a few Gigabytes of data daily. Alternatively, a few small telescopes could continually re-point to scan and record the entire sky down to any visual magnitude brighter than 15 with a recurrence epoch of at most a few weeks, again always generating less than one Gigabyte of data each night.These estimates derive from CCD ability and budgets typical of university research projects. As a prototype, we have developed and are utilizing an inexpensive single-telescope system that obtains optical data from about 1500 square degrees. We discuss the general case of creating and storing data from a both an epochal survey, where a small number of telescopes continually scan the sky, and a continuous survey, composed of a constellation of telescopes dedicated each continually inspect a designated section of the sky. We compute specific limitations of canonical surveys in visible light, and estimate that all-sky continuous visual light surveys could be sensitive to magnitude 20 in a single night by about 2010. Possible scientific returns of continuous and epochal sky surveys include continued monitoring of most known variable stars, establishing case histories for variables of future interest, uncovering new forms of stellar variability, discovering the brightest cases of microlensing, discovering new novae and supernovae, discovering new counterparts to gamma-ray bursts, monitoring known Solar System objects, discovering new Solar System objects, and discovering objects that might strike the Earth.

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Stardial: an Autonomous Astronomical Camera on the World Wide Web

Cited by 9 publications

References 7 publications

Accessible Elements: Teaching Science Online and at a Distance

Accessible Elements: Teaching Science Online and at a Distance

TASS Mark III Photometric Survey of the Celestial Equator

Toward a Continuous Record of the Sky

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