Live report on a practical exercise in physics at Meudon n°7, 22nd of February 2013
by Pierre Baudoz and his team, Observatoire de Paris
This evening, we went on a tour of the domes, so that the students could have a look at all the astronomical instruments on the site. Last week, they had not been able to see them all, as each group of four students had observed with a different instrument. The students were very impressed.
We then returned to the Masters lecture room, for a short introductory course on data processing, in order to analyse the data acquired last week.
At about 21H, the students started a simplified exercise, which enabled them to understand the principle of the techniques which would be implemented. After that, they started work on the data obtained the week before.
All the groups managed to obtain images in various colours, (red, green, blue) after subtracting out the dark current.
Some were even able to create a three colour image of Jupiter (shown below) using the software ImageJ.
Clearly visible are the end of the transit of the shadow of the satellite Ganymede, and the image of Europa just beyond the edge of Jupiter (the three colour images of Europa have not been perfectly aligned).
These observations were made with the 1 m telescope. The group working with the 35 cm telescope produced a beautiful colour image of the galaxy M42 (shown below).
