The Faulkes Telescope Project Deep Impact

1
The Faulkes Telescope ProjectDeep Impact
Bioastronomy

• Institute for Astronomy
• University of Hawaii
• K. Meech

2
Faulkes Telescope Project

• Educational Partnership
• Educational Trust of Great Britain (UK)
• Institute for Astronomy (HI)
• Purpose Astronomy Outreach
• Location
• Haleakala, Maui Hawaii
• Australia
• Operations
• Remote control from the UK Hawaii
• Observe from classrooms
• Queue Scheduled
• 30 of evenings for Hawaii

3
The Faulkes Telescope

• Professional Telescope
• 2-m f/10 primary alt/azimuth
• 12 arc min FOV
• Guider to 17th mag
• Optical Detector
• EEV CCD42-20 CCD 2048x2048 pixels (0.135)
• 4.6 x 4.6 FOV
• Filters Sloan u', g', r', i', z', B, V, ND
• Future instruments
• Near IR imager
• Spectrograph

4
Project Status
MOU 6/26/99

• Enclosure Scotland
• Ship 7/02
• Install 11/22/02
• Telescope ship 8/02

Site blessing 11/02/01

• Telescope
• Install 1/23/03
• Electronics 7/03
• First light 8/03
• Operations Oct 04

Phase 1 construction 3/2002
5
Faulkes Education Program

• TOPS Education Outreach Program S03 (NSF/NASA)
• Take master teachers
• Train for remote observing
• Simulate the Faulkes Experience
• 3 days learning to plan observations
• 1 day planning, learn web interface
• Receive data, learn image processing
• 1 weekend to analyze data and formulate a report
• Astrobiology Deep Impact

6
What can students do?

• Young Variables star form
• Kuiper Belt Studies
• Colors physical study
• Recovery ? orbits
• Comet Studies
• Rotation
• Space mission support
• NEO Characterization

7
What can students do?

• Extrasolar Planet Transits
• Synoptic Studies of Jupiter
• Rotation
• Synoptic Studies of Mars
• Dust storms

Courtesy of D. Charbonneau, Caltech
8
Project Goals

• Develop a teacher mentor network of teachers
• Astronomer-teacher liasons
• Provide software
• Develop an image data archive
• Increase astronomy content in classrooms
• Curriculum materials
• Science fair participation