Melissa Graham | 17 Nov 2012
On Thursday November 15 I visited the MESA Club at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, CA. This visit was arranged through a fantastic program called Santa Barbara Partners in Education that, among other activities, links schools
David Petry | 05 Nov 2012
Rounding out Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope's 1-meter southern ring development, the final two enclosures were completed last week at Siding Spring Observatory. Telescope Operations Manager Mark Willis led the effort, first building two
Stuart Lowe | 26 Oct 2012
It has been a while since I mentioned Virtual Sky. Development hasn't stopped. In fact, since my last post about it in April last year, it has gone from version 0.3.4 to 0.3.17. Over that time I've added new features and tweaked the code to s
Sandy Seale | 26 Oct 2012
Over the past summer I had the opportunity to undertake a summer placement at Cardiff University School of Physics and Astronomy through the Nuffield Science Bursary scheme, under the supervision of Dr Edward Gomez. The main aim of this project was t
LCO Webmaster | 10 Oct 2012
Two of three 1-meter LCOGT telescopes are being commissioned at our first Southern site at CTIO in Chile by Annie Hjelstrom, Vincent Posner, Kurt Vander Horst & Mark Crellin, assisted by local staff. The LCOGT team will have the third teles
LCO Webmaster | 09 Oct 2012
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Jessica Barton | 09 Oct 2012
This week’s interview is with Juan Garza.Jessica Barton: What is your job title?Juan Garza: Telescope Assembly Technician.JB: What does your work at LCOGT involve?JG: That’s kind of a trick question! In a normal environment an assembly technician wou
David Petry | 05 Oct 2012
Willie Koorts of the South Africa Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) put together a time-lapse movie of the development of the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telesope 1-meter telescope node at their site. The movie shows the site development and the cre
David Petry | 02 Oct 2012
Last night, October 1, 2012, was the first night of purely science operations for Las Cumbres Observatory’s first 1-meter telescope. The telescope is run remotely and robotically, taking queued observations from the LCOGT “POND” database, and executi
David Petry | 02 Oct 2012
A small team of Las Cumbres Observatory engineering and technical specialists arrived at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in central Chile on September 27, 2012. Their job, to install and commission three LCOGT 1-meter telescopes.
Jessica Barton | 26 Sep 2012
This week’s interview is with Rachel Street.Jessica Barton: What is your job title?Rachel Street: Project scientist.JB: What does your work at LCOGT involve?RS: My work is mainly research, and mainly studying exoplanets, but there are a lot of things
Sandy Seale | 13 Sep 2012
Beijing Olympic park played host to the 28th triennial general assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) this August. I was delighted to get a chance to attend and talk about the education and outreach resources of LCOGT. I am also a mem
Jessica Barton | 04 Sep 2012
This week’s interview is with Ben Haldeman.
David Petry | 29 Aug 2012
Todays’ print edition of the New York Times reported on a paper from the journal Science authored by Las Cumbres Observatory scientists Benjamin Dilday and Andy Howell, among others. The paper, widely reported in astronomy and physics media, wa
Abiy Tekola | 14 Aug 2012
A national Science week was celebrated nationwide here in South Africa from July 30-August 5, 2012. The event, an initiative of the South African Department of Science and Technology (DST) for highlighting the importance of science for development, i
Sandy Seale | 09 Aug 2012
This summer has been a very busy outreach season for us in UK. Stuart and I, with assistance from many others, have exhibited at 3 different festivals and spoken to around 1000 people. We've fine tuned setting up our stand to be a well oiled mach
Tim Brown | 02 Aug 2012
Call for Proposals to use LCOGT 2-meter telescope facilities in the 2012B semester (1 October 2012 - 31 March, 2013).
Jessica Barton | 30 Jul 2012
This week’s interview is with Rachel Ross.Jessica Barton: What is your job title?Rachel Ross: Jedi Master!JB: What does your work at LCOGT involve?RR: I wear many hats including being a part of the education and outreach and science teams. I am beco
Jessica Barton | 16 Jul 2012
This week’s interview is with Jason Eastman.Jessica Barton: What is your job title?Jason Eastman: Postdoctoral fellow.JB: What does your work at LCOGT involve?JE: My major focus is building the NRES prototype spectrograph for BOS. (NRES stands for Ne
LCO Webmaster | 10 Jul 2012
Every year, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) presents eight awards to the astronomy community including amateur astronomy and outreach, teaching astronomy at various levels, significant contributions to astronomy research, and to outstan
Jessica Barton | 02 Jul 2012
This week’s interview is with Michelle Becker.Jessica Barton: What is your job title?Michelle Becker: Junior Software engineer.JB: What does your work at LCOGT involve?MB: Coding! Currently I’m working on visualization of the scheduler - It’s a web a
Tim Lister | 19 Jun 2012
The recently installed 1-meter telescope at McDonald Observatory has helped confirm its first two new Near Earth Objects (NEOs). Both were candidates from PanSTARRS, and were followed up by a number of observatories including LCOGT. The first object
Jessica Barton | 18 Jun 2012
This week’s interview is with Eric Saunders.Jessica Barton: What is your job title?Eric Saunders: Software engineer.JB: What does your work at LCOGT involve?ES: I work on the scheduler for our robotic telescope network. It’s a pretty unusual software
Abiy Tekola | 14 Jun 2012
I represented LCOGT in a four days roadshow astronomy outreach program in three towns (Sutherland, Williston and Fraserburg) near the home of the LCOGT telescopes in Sutherland, South Africa. Organised by the Cape Town Science centre, SAAO and L
David Sand | 11 Jun 2012
The first Folded Low Order whYte-pupil Double-dispersed Spectrograph (FLOYDS, for short) was commissioned at Faulkes Telescope South (FTS) at Siding Spring Observatory during the first two weeks of May, andfirst light was achieved on May 7th. F