On Wednesday the 26th of September 37 Physics, Astrophysics and Space Science students at stages 2, 3 and 4 in SPS attended the induction event at the Beacon Observatory.
The students were given a short tour and health and safety briefing by the postgraduate demonstrators and the observatory director Dr Dirk Froebrich. This allows them to take up the opportunity offered every year to take part in the observations done by the observatory each night when the weather is clear. All students who wish can express their interest to take part in these observations, which provides some real hands-on experience using an optical telescope as well as processing and analysing the images obtained. Most of the observations this winter will focus on data taking for PH700 final year MPhys projects, as well as other projects such as the HOYS-CAPS citizen science project’s monitoring of young star clusters, follow up photometry of Gaia detected transients and the planned observations of comet 46P/Wirtanen in December.
All sky dome of the observatory which houses our 17″ Plane Wave Astrograph telescope. On the left you can see the weather station associated with the observatory.