Edward Gomez | 19 Dec 2009
Over the past year I have been working on a series of science video podcasts (or vodcasts), with Jon Yardley and Olivia Gomez. There are lots of vodcasts available in the world of science but I wanted to make some which were fun and accessibe but d
Edward Gomez | 26 May 2010
For the past week Richard Miles (BAA) has been following an as-yet unidentified object orbiting the Sun (dubbed 2010 KQ), using Faulkes Telescope North. Recent observations suggest it is a man-made object with an exciting past.
Jessica Barton | 24 May 2010
The 59th annual California State Science Fair was held on May 17-18, 2010. This year 960 participants represented 394 schools throughout the state and competed for awards totaling over $50,000. Daniel Godinez and Caylin Canales took fourth place in t
Edward Gomez | 21 May 2010
There has been steady progress at our Cerro Tololo , Chile site over the past few month. Here are latest photos from Enrique (who is project managing the ground work for us in Chile). This might not look like much but it represents a significant a
Edward Gomez | 04 Feb 2010
This comet appears to have undergone another massive outburst, this time on 2010 February 2 increasing in brightness by a factor of 30-40. The object is one of the largest active comets known. It follows a near-circular path about 6.2 AU from the S
Jessica Barton | 17 Apr 2010
Tonight at the Santa Barbara County Science fair, Daniel Godinez, Caylin Canales and Rishika Singh all won gold medals for their science fair projects and will be going to the state science fair next month!
Edward Gomez | 12 Jan 2010
The development of our custom made enclosures for our 0.4m telescopes is continuing. The project is called Aqawan, which is the Chumash word for 'to be dry'. Have a look at my previous blog entry about the aqawan design.
Edward Gomez | 22 Jan 2010
I rediscovered a tool that I had forgotten about this morning. A website called Wordle which can grab all the text from a website, rss feed or even a paragraph that you submit and graphically display the words in a semi-artistic way. Larger words rep
Edward Gomez | 27 Jan 2010
We have been commissioning a new camera over the past few months, called Spectral (although it is an imaging camera not a spectrometer). One of our science interns (BJ Fulton) has been following an open cluster monitoring program and has been among
Edward Gomez | 20 Jul 2009
We have made some updates to the website in the past couple of months. Here are the highlights.
LCO Webmaster | 17 Dec 2009
This week, a number of scientists have gathered in Madrid to discuss the first science results from the Herschel Space Telescope. Herschel is the largest astronomical telescope ever put in space (the mirror is 3.5m wide!) and observes light at inf
Jacob Towsley | 18 Nov 2009
On 30 October Kurt Vander Horst and Jacob Towsley commissioned the new Wren Marcario Accessible Telescope (WMAT) telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas. WMAT is a unique design for telescope which is accessible to people in a seated position,
Edward Gomez | 04 Nov 2009
Faulkes Telescope North has undergone a substantial refurbishment. The primary mirror has been removed using a portable gantry, and block and tackle. This is no mean undertaking as the mirror itself weighs over a ton, at 1240 Kg (2734 lbs). The mi
Edward Gomez | 16 Oct 2009
As part of Twitter Moonwatch we have been working with our UK education partner Faulkes Telescope Project and the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (UK national node), to bring a competition to win an hour observing on Faulkes Telescope South
JD Armstrong | 09 Oct 2009
Tonight We will attempt to image the LCROSS impact using the Faulkes Telescope North. Recently students at Kalama Intermediate on Maui created their own LCROSS event. Assisted by Dr. J. D. Armstrong, on Friday October 2nd students in the astrono
LCO Webmaster | 05 Oct 2009
October 3, 2009 was the first annual Science Day at the Santa Barbara Zoo. Many excited kids, parents, and teachers got to spend a sunny Saturday surrounded not only by hundreds of exciting and exotic animals, but by also learning about different
Edward Gomez | 05 Oct 2009
Every year the Las Cumbres Amateur Outreach Award is presented to an individual displaying outstanding outreach by an amateur astronomer to children and the public. This award is presented at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) annual mee
JD Armstrong | 03 Oct 2009
On September 18 the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, Haleakalā division held their third annual Open House from 6:00 – 8:00 pm. This year ice cream was added to the popular liquid nitrogen demonstration. The lab tours allowed hundreds
Mark Elphick | 17 Sep 2009
Sunday 13th of September 2009.
Edward Gomez | 01 Sep 2009
This movie shows the whole night on Haleakala from an all sky camera we have installed next to Faulkes Telescope North. The camera takes images every 3 minutes and this is a 15 frame/smovie of the images taken on September 1 from 04:45 UT (just as th
Edward Gomez | 18 Aug 2009
I have been working with a student from Mechelen Technical School (near Antwerp), Belgium on an asteroid project. The student contacted me about using the "Making Craters " activity as part of year long project for final year of secondary s
Edward Gomez | 14 Aug 2009
It is company policy to name each of our sites (internationally) after the closest airport, using the 3-digit airport code. Santa Barbara is SBA, which is quite understandable. Haleakala is labelled OGG after Kahului airport on Maui. The origin of th
LCO Webmaster | 08 Aug 2009
Last night, we realised that all the analysis we did on the polar alignment and azimuth axis the night previously had been the wrong way. We were so frustrated! I would like to blame altitude for this, but it appears to be a software issue which
Edward Gomez | 07 Aug 2009
This week a commissioning team (Wayne Rosing, Jacob Towsley, Haley Gomez and Edward Gomez) have been at Haleakala , and were finally able to observe on sky last night. We were working on the 0.4m telescope in the South end of the Haleakala enclosu
LCO Webmaster | 07 Aug 2009
Ok, so yesterday was bit of a struggle. Not much progress was made due to network issues but they seem to be solved now. We've been up the mountain for 10 hours doing some work but we're only just now about to start looking at some stars through