This is a young high school student who came to our astronomy club and asked for help with a two-year science project he wanted to do, but he needed help. So we loaned him this telescope and mount that someone had recently donated to the club. The club is also going to buy him a special grating for spectroscopy for use with the telescope and his camera. He is a brilliant young man, and I am in awe of the project he is not afraid to take on. It is really rewarding to be able to help him.
4 comments:
OK, you have now teased me and perhaps the rest of your fan club. What is the gist of the young man's two-year experiment?
WOW! I love this and the help the club can assist him with. We will need to be updated along the way with this young man's project.
Joan
This is wonderful! Can't wait to follow the story in the future. betsey
He wants to do spectroscopy of individual stars. The starlight comes in the telescope, then through a diffraction grating, which produces sort of a "rainbow" of colors as the grating splits the beam of starlight into a spectrum. That image of the spectrum is captured by an DSLR camera. Within the spectrum are dark lines, and those dark lines tell us what elements are in the starlight, thus giving us a clue to the age of the star, in addition to its makeup. The process uses sophisticated software on a computer to process the image of spectrum to get the data. It is an astounding project for a high school student to undertake on his own!
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