Click Here for the PowerPoint Poster Size Presentation of this Publication (Size = 0.8MB)

Atmospheric Seeing and Transparency Robotic Observatory

J. Donald Cline, Michael Castelaz

A robotic 12.7 cm telescope and camera (together called OVIEW) have been designed to do photometry of 50 of the brightest stars in the local sky 24 hours a day.  Each star is imaged through a broadband  500 nm filter.  Software automatically analyzes the brightness of the star and the stellar seeing disk.  The results are published in real-time on a web page.  Comparison of stellar brightness with known apparent magnitude is a measure of transparency with instrument resolution of one arcsecond.  We will describe the observatory, software, and website.

We will also describe other telescopes on the Optical Ridge at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI).  On the same pier as OVIEW is a second robotic 12.7 cm telescope and camera that image the sun and moon.  The solar and lunar images are published live on the Internet.  Also on the Optical Ridge is a robotic 20 cm telescope.  This telescope is operated by UNC-Chapel Hill and has been operating on the Optical Ridge for more than 2 years surveying the plane of the Milky Way for binary low mass stars.  UNC-Chapel Hill also operates a 25 cm telescope with an IR camera for photometry of gamma ray burst optical afterglows.  An additional 25 cm telescope with a new 3.2 megapixel CCD is used for undergraduate research and W UMa binary star photometry.

We acknowledge the AAS Small Grant Program for partial support of the solar/lunar telescope.