La Société Guernesiaise Astronomy Section
All-sky camera
A new Starlight Xpress Oculus 150-degree all-sky camera has been set up at the Guernsey Observatory, as of April 2017. Live images (night-time only) and the last night’s video can be accessed here.
From 09 August 2011 to 30 April 2015 the Guernsey Observatory was the location of an all-sky camera, one of a network of such cameras placed by the University of Hertfordshire. It took pictures of the entire night sky every couple of minutes, uploading them to a website in real time, archiving them, and creating a nightly video, which was itself uploaded to the website. The archived images and videos can be accessed at http://star.herts.ac.uk/allsky/index.php?c=5.
The University’s camera was a Santa Barbara Instruments Group AllSky 340 monochrome camera, using a Kodak KAI-340 CCD, 640x480 pixels, each 7.4 microns square, and a high gain output stage. It had a Fujinon fisheye lens, focal length 1.4 mm, F/1.4, with an acrylic dome cover, and an internal heater to keep the lens free from condensation and the dome free from dew. Raindrops have to evaporate naturally. More details are available at the above website, and a brief description of the installation is contained in an article in a newsletter, accessible here.
Here are some pictures of the camera, and some of the interesting images which have been recorded.
A typical
clear-sky image taken at midnight UT on 01 October 2011, showing, prominently,
the Milky Way and Jupiter. North is up,
east left and west right. 2-minute exposure.
International
Space Station, 28 September 2011, 2-minute exposure. Aircraft, 28 November 2011,
45-second exposure.
Iridium 56 flare, 15 October 2011.
Fireball (a very bright meteor), 13 November 2011.
The fireball was
observed by Daniel Carvill, who described it as large, green, very bright, and
visible for about 5 seconds.
A Barn Owl has
been a regular visitor, using the camera as a convenient perch. The left image shows it as a ghostly outline,
as it was present for only part of the 2-minute exposure. The right image shows it in detail in a
17-second exposure on a cloudy night.
The nightly videos clearly demonstrate the apparent rotation of the stars, as the Earth turns on its axis. Click here for a good example (flash video, playable, for example, with RealPlayer).
Link: NASA’s all-sky fireball network.
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This page was last updated on 2017 April 06.
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