Projects

During VSA 2006, work was divided on four different projects. The topics covered were:

Analysis of light pollution on sky quality in Istria

Petra Korlevic (1), Mirna Kramar (2), Zeljko Andreic (3)

(1) PMF, University of Zagreb, Croatia; (2) SS Ivanec, Ivanec, Croatia; (3) RGN, University of Zagreb, Croatia;


Measuring sky brightness near
Pula Observatory

Light pollution is becoming a serious problem not only in astronomy, but also in fields like ecology, psychology, economics etc. The most common categories of light pollution are light trespass (light shining into someone's home or private property), glare (the light that shines directly into the viewer's face and disables him to see for a short time), over-illumination and clutter (putting more illumination than necessary, especially in the same place).

Our goals were:

  • Measuring the sky brightness from various locations
  • Imaging the night sky with an all-sky camera; observing how the light from different pollutants spreads on the sky
  • Correlating the sky brightness measurements with the all-sky images
  • Mapping all the street lamps in Višnjan and comparison with the data from 2001
More ...
Briefing 1 PowerPoint, 1.4MB
Briefing 2 PowerPoint, 1.6MB
Final presentation PowerPoint, 6.7MB
Web report
Gallery

Meteors: correlation of visual, radio and ELF measurements 

Slaven Misak (1), Diego Sirola (2), Ahn Soo Young (3), Jee Myeong Keun (4), Nikola Strah (5), Goran Zgrablic (6), Izidor Pelajic (7)

(1) Prva Gimnazija Varazdin, Croatia; (2) Gimnazija Pula, Croatia; (3) Kyunggi Science HIgh School, South Korea; (4) Kyungnam Science High School, South Korea; (5) PMF, University of Zagreb, Croatia; (6) Sincrotrone Elettra, Trieste, Italy; (7) PMF, University of Zagreb, Croatia


Data reduction

Meteors are a brief streak of light in the Earth's upper atmosphere produced by the high - speed entry of a small fragment of interplanetary debris (a meteoroid). Although much observational and experimental work has already been done, the interaction of meteors with Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere is not yet completely understood. 

Our goal was to make parallel observation in visual spectral range (by visual and video observations), also in radio and in ELF/ULF range, and then compare this data. The whole observational and experimental work has been done during the Visnjan School of Astronomy 2006.

More ...
Briefing 1 Powerpoint, 6.3MB
Briefing 2 PowerPoint, 4.7MB
Final presentation PowerPoint, 5.5MB
Web report Word document, 1.3MB
Gallery

Treasure hunting in astronomical image archives

Dino Bektesevic (1), Eui Oan Jeong (2), Ku Ja Ok (3), Reiner Stoss (4)

(1) Gimnazija Cakovec, Croatia; (2) Gangwon Science High School, South Korea; (3) Seoul Science High School, South Korea; (4) University of Heidelberg, Germany


Discussion on software design

This group will use images made by large professional telescopes with the goal of finding new transient objects, i.e. objects which change their position and/or brightness. We will search for asteroids and comets as far out as Pluto. But we will also search for a possible object much further from our Sun, let's call it "Object Z". Additionally we will watch out for new variable stars.

For the confirmation of any possible discovery we will have access to a remote telescope at the Observatorio Astronomico de Mallorca (OAM) in Spain, controlled over the Internet. For this massive number crunching we will develop and implement a data pipeline based on scripts written in Python. So beware of snake-bites!

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Briefing 1 PowerPoint, 1.8MB
Briefing 2 PowerPoint, 7.7MB
Final presentation PowerPoint, 10.3MB
Web report
Gallery

Visnjan Observatory robotic telescope

Aleksandar Cikota (1), Stefan Cikota (2), Ana Bonaca (3), Reiner Stoss (4)

(1) Peta Gimnazija, Zagreb, Croatia; (2) Peta Gimnazija, Zagreb, Croatia; (3) PMF, University of Zagreb, Croatia; (4) University of Heidelberg, Germany;


Adapting terrace to house
the robotic telescope

In this group the students will develop a software to remotely control the Visnjan Observatory Robotic Telescope (VORT) prototype over the Internet. The VORT prototype is a 20cm Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope with a CCD camera. It will be housed in a shelter which will be constructed during VSA too, if time permits.

The telescope can be used for astrometry and photometry of asteroids and comets, photometry of variable stars, supernova search and many other interesting tasks. Software is written in Python, a very clean, easy-to-learn and yet powerful language, used in modern astronomy. You will learn it pretty fast, don't worry.

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Briefing 1 PowerPoint, 1.9MB
Briefing 2 PowerPoint, 7.7MB
Final presentation PowerPoint, 10.3MB
Web report
Gallery