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August 7, 2009 Workshops
The Hopkins Phoenix Observatory will be presenting two workshops on Friday, August 7. One will be on spectroscopy of epsilon Aurigae and the other on Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera photometry of epsilon Aurigae.
The spectroscopy workshop will provide an introduction to spectroscopy. There will be a discussion on what spectroscopy can be done with a minimum amount of equipment and expense. For those people wishing more, a review of the Lhires III spectrograph and its use for high resolution spectroscopy with some tips and tricks will be presented. Spectroscopy is exciting and easier than you may think.
The DSLR workshop will cover what is needed to do photometry on epsilon Aurigae using a DSLR camera. It turns out the RGB filters of some DSLR cameras are close in bandpass characteristics to standard photometric filters. With just a DSLR camera on a tripod, you too can do photometry.
Jeff Hopkins
Hopkins Phoenix Observatory
Phoenix, Arizona USA
http://www.hposoft.com/Campaign09.html
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Jeff, for those who cannot attend the workshops, will you make your presentations available online?
Plans are to make both workshops available online.
All talks and workshops will be digitally recorded and placed on this web site for viewing along with PDFs of any slides used. We also will make DVDs which we'll send to amateur astronomy clubs across the country for use by their members.
Which camera will you be using for the DSLR workshop? Do we have to modify ours in some way? I have a Nikon D90
For the Workshop you do not need to bring a camera. No modifications are needed to the camera to do the photometry. Des Loughney of Scotland has been doing excellent V band photometry of epsilon Aurigae for over 6 months. Des uses a Canon 450D with 85 mm lens. I use a Nikon D60. A D90 should work fine, bigger chip. You will need to experiment some, but the biggest hurtle will be in the processing of the images to get the brightness data. Right now epsilon Aurigae is in a very poor position, but mid-July it will be up just before sunrise. Before then you can experiment on some 3rd/4th magnitude stars that are convenient. Once you have the technique, you are set for epsilon.
Thanks for the info Jeff. I will be practicing on Algol. And maybe a couple other stars.
Perhaps I will try my Canon Rebel XSi (unmodified)and see what type of results I obtain.Epsilon Aurigae is not in a favorable position from here at this time.However, Beta Lyrae as well as R Lyrae are well positioned.Ron