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 | 06 Aug 2009
We're about to leave since we're all pretty tired after trying to solve some problems
LCO Webmaster | 05 Aug 2009
This morning we had an eventful ride up the mountain, we were stuck behind a horsebox on its way up to the peak to ferry down the tourists. Jacob, our driver, did his very best to stay calm traveling at 5 mph for almost 20 minutes but we got here ev
LCO Webmaster | 05 Aug 2009
Well, we've been at the summit for almost 10 hours and it's been great so far. Mark was installing a webcam on the outside of a building and we helped him out whilst the electrics and links with the 0.4m and the control software are bei
LCO Webmaster | 04 Aug 2009
This week, I have been lucky enough to be asked to go out to the Haleakala site in Maui by LCOGT to help commission the telescopes. As an astrophysicist, I often analyze images from telescopes (mostly ones which work in the far-infrared range, includ
Edward Gomez | 21 Jul 2009
The commissioning work at the Sedgwick Reserve Observatory continues. This is the latest image taken by the LCOGT team working on the telescope.
LCO Webmaster | 08 Aug 2009
After 15 hours on the mountain, we got first light on the South 0.4m. The first images looked a little strange (see the bottom image) because the telescope wasn't focussed yet. Once this was done, we checked the drift on the stars and saw they wer
Edward Gomez | 20 Jul 2009
We have made some updates to the website in the past couple of months. Here are the highlights.
Edward Gomez | 10 Jul 2009
Over the past few months LCOGT has been making lots of progress with the 1-meter telescope prototype, the 1-meter enclosure prototype, the 0.4-meter telescope , and the 0.4-meter enclosure prototype, also know as "Aqawan".
Edward Gomez | 04 Jun 2009
The network expansion continues. Earlier this week Faulkes Telescope North was joined by 2 smaller telescopes, installed inside the Haleakala observatory enclosure as can be seen in the images. You can just make out the 2 small black tubes next t
Edward Gomez | 19 May 2009
We've recently launched an exoplanet observing programme, and are looking for people to help with observing these very rare microlensing events. One such group in Ireland has already taken up the challenge and successfully observed 10 different candi
LCO Webmaster | 27 Apr 2009
Last week (April 23-26, 2009) we have had a traditional (9th) Science and Art Festival in our town Torun (Poland). Since the beginning it is connected with Nicholas Copernicus University and other institutions in our region, which during 4 days pre
Edward Gomez | 24 Apr 2009
The Sedgwick telescope has now had first light at its site. The telescope is not robotically controllable yet and does not have a full set of instrumentation installed or commissioned on it. This trip was was to check and calibrate the optics on a
JD Armstrong | 16 Apr 2009
At the recent Hawai`i State Science fair there were two projects which I believe that people in the LCOGT community might find of interest.
JD Armstrong | 26 Mar 2009
On the 21st of February I took 22 Boy Scouts and 17 adults to the summit of Haleakala for a Tour of AEOS, FTN, and Mees as part of the requirements for their astronomy merit badge. After the tour we broke into three groups to work on a couple more re
Edward Gomez | 10 Mar 2009
We would like to make all our users aware that we will be performing IT maintenance at 0500 UT on 11 March. This will mean some of our services will be unavailable (including the website and data archives).
LCO Webmaster | 16 Jan 2009
The next batch of 0.4m telescopes are nearly done being built and have begun to be wired up. The current plan is that the first pair will be sent to Haleakala at the end of March 2009 (where they will be housed inside the FTN clamshell), the next