1. COLDEX WP4
Astronomic Scenarios
UPM & CHILE

2. Observatorio Cerro Calán
REMOTE SCENARIOS
Observatorio Cerro Calán
Santiago de Chile
South hemisphere
Facultad Informática
UPM - Madrid
North hemisphere

3. TELESCOPES
Goto 45 CM
Cassegrain
Meade 25 CM
LX-200

4. ARCHITECTURE Madrid
Motorized
dome
Home-Dome

5. ARCHITECTURE Santiago
CATS
Server
CCD
Server
CAMERA
SBIG ST-8
CATS Client
Developed by ourselfs
TELESCOPE
Goto 45 CM
Cassegrain

6. EXPERIMENTS (Challenges)
• Moon cartography and crater measurement
• Observation of solar planets
• Observation of Messier objects
• Asteroids localization
• Sunspot measurement

7. EXP. 4: ASTEROIDS • Learning goal: Discover new asteroids
• Places: Santiago & Madrid
• Actions:
- Aiming to a specific area of an asteroids belt
- Taking pairs of images
- Processing images
- Calculate the asteroids trajectory
- Report to the asteroids data base

8. How to detect asteroids
(Yebes -SPAIN, June 9th 2003) 1 2
2º Two stars are identified in both images
1º Two images are taken from the same part of the sky at different times
3º The asteroid can easily be seen by processing the two images (next slide)

10. EXP. 5: SUNSPOTS
• Learning goal: Counting sunspots and measuring their size
• Places: Santiago & Madrid
• Actions:
- Aiming to a specific area of the sun
- Taking R-G-B images
- Processing images
- Counting spots and measuring their size

11. In one week, the size of
some spots changes dramatically

12. • The number and size of sunspots vary with time

13. Pedagogic Goals Authentic Activities
Imitation of real professional's work
System provides scaffolding
Collaboration is not artificially imposed
Challenge based learning

14. Learning Sceanrio 4: Asteroids
Astronomy clubs at schools
Challenge: discover new asteroids
They propose an observation program which is delivered to the telescope operators in an appropiate language and format
Photographs are taken by the staff and provided to the students. They are also stored in a public repository (following LOR structures)
Students process the data with appropiate tools
They publish their results in a repository

15. Learning Sceanrio 5: Sunspots
Challenge: analyse the behaviour and size of the sunspots
The telescope operators takes photographs of the sun every 3-4 days
Photographs are stored in a repository from which students can download them
They measure and describe their movement, again publishing their results in a repository
They can use hystorical material stored in the repository
They may use the repository material for other tasks

16. The Required Tools
A system for gathering and processing observation requirements
Workflow processing tool including image processing modules
Repository of photographs
Repository of published works
Repository of other didactical material
An "Astronomical Encyclopaedia“
Including a sky visualizing simulation tool
LOR

17. Image processing module
• Image processing must be performed on the client side
• TITERE tool will be integrated in COOLMODES

18. Sky visualization tool

19. Value Added
We propose an integrated view of astronomical observation processed in a collaborative way
There is no requirement of full remote, nor exclusive operation of the telescope
Allows sharing of the data generated among all groups
Provides a structure for storing data generated, which will facilitate its later retrieval and use in different learning scenarios
Provides an interoperative formal language to specify observation requirements that is simple enough for non- professionals but requires the understanding of some astronomical concepts
Provides tools for
establishing and processing the required workflow
Processing images
Gaining access to relevant data