Potential Projects & software

Hello Everyone,
First: A big thank you to all who attended: you are a superb bunch! I always feel even more energized after meeting like-minded individuals, epecially those with the passion for astronomy. I will be posting a few additional topics shortly to this blog, but initially I wanted to just list those topics which would be just GREAT for the new facility. This is something to start sinking your teeth into. Enjoy!
~john

=================

• Variable star monitoring: long period (300 days), short period (days), eclipsing binaries (hours), Cataclysmic Variabless (unknown periods!) and so many more. Involved photometric analysis and numerical analysis.
• Moon of Jupiter and Saturn: period, mass of planet, speed of light.
• Galaxy and galaxy cluster imaging for beauty and science: observe as many as possible in single night and then, lather, rinse, repeat for weeks on end looking for supernovae.
• comet and asteroid monitoring. There are more asteroids to see than a lifetime will allow. There are also always comets to see... many more than you read about. Orbital determination, math, tracking, astrometry.
• Spectroscopy! TOO many things to list here: radial velocities, temperatures, chemical makeup, and more.
• RGB color imaging.
• Narrow band imaging with Ha, O[III], S[II] narrow band filters. Makes your images look like HST shots!
• High proper motion stars: Barnard's Star, ie.
• Studies of local star clusters: HR diagram, luminosity and distance measurement, plot your own HR diagram, determine their ages.
• Find and study Pluto!
• Venus! It has phases which can even be seen in daylight hours. BEWARE THE SUN!
• ...so many more that I am likely to forget...

Software:

• MaxIm DL: expensive. Professional. EXCELLENT image processing for astronomy. Does data extraction well and easily.
• PhotoShop: Expensive, professional and EXCELLENT image processing for everything.
• ImageJ: FREE and good for astronomy applications. Runs using JAVA, so runs on multiple OS platforms.
• Excel: great for data analysis, as long as kids avoid using the plot line and slope functions! ;-)
• TheSky from Software Bisque: among many many other good planetarium programs, this one comes the closest to being ultra professional. It costs a bundle, but has all you need to prep a night of observing. There are others like Starry Night Pro that do as well.
• Vernier Software Graphical Analysis: excellent graphing application for things like variable stars and spectra. Does integration of graphs to determine true luminosity.
• Visual Spec: Freeware spectrum analysis software. GREAT product. Originally in French, and perhaps a bit quirky, but does real science really well.
• RSpec: low-cost spectrum analysis software in English. Not as scientific perhaps as Visual Spec, but is fun, informative and educational.