Return to search

A New Look at Hard Labor Creek Observatory

This document presents a study of astronomical observing conditions of Hard Labor Creek Observatory. Analysis of factors such as sky brightness, astonomical seeing, and patterns in the level of cloudiness at the site are presented. Characteristics of the observatory's Apogee Alta U230 camera are also measured and calculated. These characteristics include loss of linearity in the CCD's response to light, read noise, gain, dark current, and stability in the camera's bias levels. The camera is also used in conjunction with the 20-inch RC Optics telescope to determine the system's pixel scale and a set of limiting magnitudes for the Johnson-Cousins photometric filters that are used with the camera. Observations of a transit of known transiting exoplanet Qatar-2 b as well as observations of the open cluster Messier 29 are also performed to demonstrate the ability of the equipment to perform precise photometric observations.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:GEORGIA/oai:digitalarchive.gsu.edu:phy_astr_theses-1014
Date16 April 2012
CreatorsMoore, Robert D, Jr
PublisherDigital Archive @ GSU
Source SetsGeorgia State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourcePhysics and Astronomy Theses

Page generated in 0.0016 seconds