On the night of Apr 11/12, 2014, two students taking the Observational Astronomy course -- Nathaniel Mathews and Kayla Emerson -- acquired images of the variable star BF CVn for their class project. In addition, I acquired images of M42 for Ashley Atwater of the biomedical photography program; she will compare them to some images of M42 she took with an ordinary DSLR for her own capstone project.
The main setup was:
The R-band images of M42 turned out fine:
The images of BF CVn were technically fine, but the field is rather sparse: there aren't many stars to use as comparisons for the variable, which is the bright star near bottom center in the image shown below.
Mr. Mathews and Miss Emerson will look at the roughly 300 images we acquired to see if we can detect any change in the target star, relative to the comparison stars. A preliminary check done during the night suggested that this star may not show signficant changes; if confirmed with a more careful analysis, then the students will have to pick another target for their work.
Last modified 4/14/2014 by MWR.