|
Huachuca Astronomy Club—Speakers
Dean Salman
Dean Salman has been interested in astronomy since he was in second grade and has been doing
film and CCD astrophotography since 1973. He  has given planetarium shows while going to college, and provided the
nighttime programs for the National Parks and US Forest Service in California, Utah, Colorado, and
Missouri in the 1980s. He has had his images published in Astronomy, Sky and Telescope,
and about a dozen other books and journals around the world. He was also one of the imagers selected in the recent
issue of Sky and Telescope's Beautiful Universe 2008. He is currently working on a project to capture the Sharpless Catalog using narrowband filters.
"Remote Imaging, Far and Near," June 20, 2008
Our speaker for June 2008 was Dean Salman and he talked about setting up a remote, robotic telescope site. He covered the software and hardware you need to consider and the advantages and disadvantages of what he used. He covered the equipment you need to do automated imaging runs while you are sleeping through the night. During the presentation he connected to a remote site in New Mexico to demonstrate how it all works. Most of what was discussed can be done in your very own backyard.
At the June 2008 Huachuca Astronomy Club meeting in Sierra Vista, Arizona, Dean Salman demonstrates the ability to remotely control a robotic telescope in New Mexico over an Internet connection.
A PowerPoint slideshow file is available which contains images and text from Dean Salman's talk. If you do not have PowerPoint, Microsoft has a free PowerPoint viewer. Use their download site to search for it.
PowerPoint Slide Show: "Remote Automation," by Dean Salman
 Remote Automation -- PowerPoint Slide Show (9 MB)
Note: After downloading the PowerPoint slide show, click the mouse to advance through the slides.
Dean Salman demonstrated the remote control over the Internet of an automated telescope in New Mexico.
More pictures of Dean Salman giving his talk, "Remote Imaging, Far and Near," can be found in the Photo Gallery. 
A Visit to Keck
Copyright © 2008 Dean Salman
Dean Salman visits the 10-meter Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
On Friday, Feb. 15, 2008, Dean Salman gave a presentation to the Huachuca Astronomy Club at Cochise College, Sierra Vista, Arizona. The topic was his visit to the Keck Observatory, sitting nearly 14,000 ft. over the Pacific Ocean, on Mauna Kea, an extinct volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii.
“A Visit to Keck,” Dean Salman
Copyright © 2008 Dean Salman
The twin Keck observatories atop Mauna Kea at sunset (middle). (Also pictured is the Subaru telescope (left) and the NASA Inrared Telescope Facility (right).)
Club member and well-renowned astrophotographer Dean Salman gave a presentation on his trip to Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea on the big island of Hawaii. Dean traveled there in January 2008 with his wife to visit a friend who works at Keck as an electrical engineer. The observatory is at an elevation of 13,600 feet (4145 m).
On the way up the mountain, you are requested to stop at the visitor’s center, which is at 9,000 feet (2743 m), and stay there for at least an hour to get accustomed to the altitude. While waiting for the hour to expire, Dean and his wife took a short hike, and were treated to spectacular views of Mauna Loa, which is the largest volcano on earth, although its peak is about 120 feet (37 m) lower than that of its neighbor, Mauna Kea. The visitor’s center also offers a nighttime observing program. Dean remarked that the night sky there is black, and very dark. So dark, in fact, that the zodiacal light is rather annoying. There are also geological sights to behold, such as lava beds and lava bombs. To proceed further than 9,000 feet you must sign a waiver that essentially states, “If I do not return from the mountain top, it is my fault.” There have been cases of people dying up on the mountain. In fact, recently a van full of people went up, and on their way down their brakes failed. They went over a 400-foot cliff and they were all killed. Dean heard that this kind of tragedy occurs frequently. It’s about a 20- to 30-degree slope, and you are not supposed to drive anything but a 4-wheel-drive vehicle past the 9,000-foot mark.
Nearing 13,000 feet, there starts to be some snow. Zero-degree (F) temperatures are not uncommon at Keck, but it was about 20° F (-7° C) in the daytime when Dean was there. The road is clear, but the going is still slow, you must take your time. The terrain is rugged. The scenery is fantastic; much like Pike’s Peak, but a little bit more jagged.
The twin Keck telescopes sit on the summit of Mauna Kea. They are the world’s largest optical and infrared telescopes (as of 2008). Each telescope stands eight stories tall and weighs about 270 tons. This site is also a top candidate for the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT). When built, the TMT will be the largest telescope in the world. (See http://www.tmt.org.)
Dean’s friend, the electrical engineer, has a nice job, working at the Keck. “It’s a pretty rough life,” says Dean. All he has to do is make sure the electronics of the telescope are working, but most of the time everything works just fine. So he gets ample time to get out his own telescope and get in some observing from this location—one of the best in the world. His work day starts at 6:00 a.m. He leaves his house to meet the van at 7:00 a.m. They drive up to the visitor’s center, where they give him breakfast, because they still need to wait the customary hour. Then they drive another hour up to the top. They stay up there another eight or nine hours, then drive back down. It’s about a 12-hour day. However, he only has to do this about three days per week. One of the job requirements is the ability to withstand the changes in altitude.
Copyright © 2008 Dean Salman
Dean Salman at the controls of the Keck II telescope, January 2008.
The Keck telescopes use adaptive optics to control an array of smaller mirrors, as opposed to trying to use one large mirror. Computers control the mirrors. The adaptive optics help to reduce the image blurring that occurs even at the world’s best observation sites like Mauna Kea. The mirrors adapt instantaneously to the changing sky conditions, canceling out any atmospheric distortion. They fire a 15-watt sodium laser into the sky. It excites the sodium atoms that occur naturally in the atmosphere at about 55 miles up (90 km), and creates an artificial guide star. The computers adapt the optics up to 670 times per second to compensate for any detected distortions. On fairly bright objects, this system yields from ten to twenty times improvement in image quality, which allows astronomers to study more distant objects in greater detail than ever before.
Dean Salman Links
CCDimages.com is a customizable Web site. You can set your location to
get statistical information on the sun, moon, and planets. This includes lunar phases to 2035,
rise and set times, magnitudes, phases, RA and DEC positions, distances, and much more. In
addition, the database gest updated every month with current events happening in the sky and
what the planets are doing for the current month.
http://www.ccdimages.com
CCD Images Library
http://www.ccdimages.org
CCD Explorer — A CCD Image Manager Program (Freeware)
http://www.ccdexplorer.com
Mauna Kea Links
Mauna Kea Webcams Page
 Speakers Index
|
