The Observatory, the Castle, and the Web of Stars

Cork students engaged in a Web of Stars session at
Blackrock Castle Observatory in IrelandLast year I posted a blog, "Web of Stars," telling of a new collaborative program between Chabot Space & Science Center and the Blackrock Castle Observatory in Cork, Ireland. To recap the program, students from different schools in the Cork area submit lists of astronomical objects to Chabot that they have researched, and then we join each other live via a video Skype call to capture their images through Chabot's 36-inch reflecting telescope, Nellie.

It's now been a year since the kickoff of Web of Stars, and I'm happy to report the program is still going strong! With a total of eight observing sessions under our belts (one per month from October 2009 through May 2010), we now prepare to launch a second year of remote, Internet-linked astronomy with a new set of Cork schools!

Early in 2009, Chabot was approached by the folks at Blackrock Castle Observatory, a public science center (excuse me: centre) and observatory built into a 16th Century castle along a tidal river in Cork. It's pretty cool: their telescope dome sits atop one of the castle turrets! The plan that was worked out involved students from specially selected schools going through workshops to prepare them for the remote astrophotography that would go on during their scheduled observing night. Using desktop planetarium software, the students researched what sky objects would be visible from Chabot during their session, and selected targets accordingly.

The lists were sent to Chabot in advance to allow pre-imaging of the objects, in the event of bad weather on the scheduled observing night. Then, on the morning of observing (2:00 AM at Chabot, 10:00 AM in Cork), a Skype videolink was established between Nellie's dome at Chabot and a computer classroom at Blackrock Castle. Introductions were made across the 8-hour time difference, and observations began (if the weather permitted).

As the images were acquired (a process that takes approximately 15 minutes or so per object), the digital files were saved to Chabot's FTP site, where they were downloaded by Blackrock Castle. The students would proceed to process the images using the software package "Salsa-J".

I can't say we had clear weather on all the nights, but having the pre-acquired images as backup worked out very well. On those evenings, the students would process the pre-acquired images and engage the Chabot observers in live video-chats.

The results? See for yourself. Check out these links to some of the observing sessions on the Blackrock Castle Observatory website: Presentation Mitchelstown (January 2010); Gaelscoil Mhachan (February 2010); Regina Mundi College (March 2010).

You can tell by some of these galleries that some of the kids had way too much fun processing the images—especially when they found out how to really manipulate those colors! I'm all for a blending of science and art! And, if the reports from Cork are true, some of the students actually changed the emphasis of their studies to science after their experience with the Web of Stars. Yippee! Success!

The Web of Stars session scheduled for October will be televised in Ireland, in preparation for the program being featured during Ireland's National Science Week in November. Publicity of this program may be a little quiet on our side of the Pond (after all, most of you are asleep when we're observing), but the names Chabot and Nellie are achieving a level of fame in Ireland!