The Hunt Begins

The Minerva telescope is an small robotic telescope array at the Whipple Observatory funded and operated by Harvard University.  It consists of 4 robotic .7 m reflecting telescopes.  It can be completely controlled remotely by any computer that can interface with its remote desktop computer.

The telescope is shared by Harvard and Caltech for exoplanet research, specifically looking for Earth-like planets in tight orbits around their home stars.  The exoplanets will be detected and measured using the transit method, detailed in Worksheet 13.2.  When an exoplanet passes between its sun and Earth, the brightness of the star will appear dimmer from Earth due to the blocked light.  The reduction is only 1%-3% of the star's brightness, but the characteristic transit light curve can show this with great precision.  

My lab group will be using Minerva tomorrow night (04/13/2015) to attempt the Astronomy 16 Exoplanet Challenge to measure the transit of a know exoplanet in exchange for an automatic "A" in the course.  We will control Minerva remotely from the Harvard Science Center Astronomy Lab.  

If this somehow fails, we will be using the Clay Telescope on top of our Science Center to attempt to several other transits.  Below is an exposure of M51 that we took during a night lab before observing an eclipsing binary star.  With luck, we will get the planet with Minerva.  Let's go get those A's!

Minerva image from https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/minerva/