After 3 years of redesign, rebuilding and renovation of our rooftop dome and telescope, the Battle Point Observatory is spreading its telescopic wings. Thanks to our tireless volunteers, the calibration and commissioning of the system is reaching its final stages a year ahead of schedule… and it is performing beyond our wildest dreams. Not just for photographing the immense beauty of our skies, but also for scientific research. This graphic is a recent light curve captured by the BPO telescope showing the light drop off from a hot Jupiter category exoplanet eclipsing its star 650 light years distant. The data demonstrates an incredible precision of +/- 32 seconds for the calculated midpoint of transit! The quality of this data is already in the research category and we’re not done yet. The past three calibration data sets are so good that they have already been accepted by both the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) and the NASA EXOPlanet databases. These databases are used by NASA when refining studies for the James Webb Space Telescope and the recent Pandora satellite program.
More importantly, this is also allowing us to expand our free school programming STEAM initiative to include our high school students a year earlier than expected. We have now been joined by our first two high school interns who, while learning the complexities of astro-data acquisition and reduction, are also helping us to design a comprehensive program for future students with an eye toward authorship of published research papers.
If any of this intrigues you, consider getting involved…The sky is literally the limit!
