By Jett Peters
Have you ever looked around at the other telescopes at UDRO and wondered what they were slewing to and why? We definitely did, so Gary Shaw is our first in a series of blogs describing what our many members do with the incredible dark skies and clear nights at UDRO.
Gary has a 12.5” Planewave CDK telescope on a Paramount MX+ and a ZWO ASI 2600 Mono with 2” photometric filters. It is a long way from the 3” reflector that he had as a kid growing up in Maine.
Gary moved his setup to UDRO in July, taking advantage of the high quality of data that can be collected as well as more nights when imaging is possible. Gary’s work from UDRO is an illustration of how citizen scientists can provide tangible support to a range of NASA missions.
A perfect example is Gary’s work with a group following up on observations made by NASA’s TESS program (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) whose mission is to look for Earth-like exoplanets. Gary has focused on vetting exoplanet candidates, exoplanets that have not been imaged before. Research on exoplanet candidates covers a whole progression, and to ensure that the task lends itself to his setup, Gary focuses on the early stage of that research. Essentially Gary is working with targets that the satellite has quickly assessed as worth closer inspection. Gary uses his equipment to answer two critical questions: one, if the event that the satellite detected is on the target the satellite thought it was on, and two, to confirm that this is an exoplanet and not something else like an eclipsing binary. Once that has been determined, larger scopes can go in and determine exact orbital data and timing.
Gary also finds the work he does responding to AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers) Alerts particularly intriguing. Typically, AAVSO will publish an alert with a target and specifics on what research they would like members to do. Members can sign up for the areas that are of the greatest interest to them. Gary has worked with cataclysmic variable stars. Members are given data in advance of a series of Hubble orbits. Members contribute to making sure of a cataclysmic variable star’s status, ensuring that it isn’t flaring at a time when it could damage Hubble’s instrumentation. Gary describes it as work that is “fun and feels relevant” as you are directly responding to a researcher’s concerns and need for information. One recent alert involved a young stellar object, ABAUR, a new star. It was different from a typical alert as there was direct interaction with the researchers. Zoom meetings with the researchers allowed those working on the alerts to feel an increased level of involvement. Gary went on to do 60-70 observations related to the project.
If you are interested in doing similar work you can begin by heading to the AAVSO website and signing up to be involved in the areas of greatest interest to you (exoplanets, eclipsing binaries, there is even a group studying our sun). There are great resources available, and people joining can learn and progress in a supportive environment.
Gary has also worked with researchers at UVA and UT in support of their research. Gary is proving that through citizen science, work with a telescope can quickly turn “retirement” into more than a full time job!
Figure 1: Zooming in on the 2.5 arcsec radius, each Gaia Star that needs to be ruled out as a potential contaminate of the transit source, is indicated together with the Target Star (T1) shown at the center.This field includes only 34 stars to rule out whereas many times there can be a hundred or more within the circle. The variety of magnitudes of these stars necessitates exposure planning to get ‘deep’ enough for their data to be evaluated.
Figure 2: This is a graph that shows the results of an analysis of each of the stars within the 2.5 arcmin radius around the Target star and whether any of those stars could be responsible for creating a false transit detection by TESS. Stars to the left of the magenta curve are ‘not cleared’ – meaning they could still be the cause of the observed flux variations. Stars between the magenta and green curves are graded as ‘Likely Cleared’ while stars to the right of the green curve are ‘cleared’.