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Spotlight

Automated Astronomy

The small green building tucked away at the bottom of a suburban section in Wellington's Pukerua Bay could be mistaken for a windowless garden shed. But the dome on top of the two-storied, three-metre square building marks it as the first low-cost automated observatory in this part of the world, housing an Automatic Photometric Telescope (APT) which supports several research programmes from some of the world's major astronomical faculties.

Twenty-four-year-old Richard Hudson and his father Gordon set up the observatory in 1990. A recent lottery grant has helped expand their equipment base. Richard works as an astronomer for the US Navy at the Marlborough-based Black Birch station, and carries out precision measurement of stars relative to their solar system reference frame.

"The ultimate idea is to be able to find out where a star is by looking at it from earth. We need that information for accurate satellite guidance, so the US military can make sure probes go in the right place," says Richard who caught the "star gazing bug" early on in life from his father.

"Dad is a photolithographer but his hobby has always been astronomy. He is also interested in astro photography so has set up a small dark room downstairs in the observatory."

Richard says he has no idea what fascinates him about astronomy.

"No, I don't see stars as something magical only as points of light, but I guess some of Dad's enthusiasm must have rubbed off on me when I was little."

Ed Brunning, senior astronomer at the Carter Observatory in Wellington, instigated the observatory's set up, arranging for the redevelopment and reinstallation of the Carter Observatory's Celestron C14 APT.

"There are about half-a-dozen observatories in New Zealand doing professional quality work which the Carter Observatory is co-ordinating," says Richard.

"The data is published in the Royal Astronomical Society of NZ Journal and several overseas journals. Our first light curve was produced in March 1992 and Ed was surprised at the quality. We also get requests by electronic mail to take part in global observations.

"We switch the telescope on as soon as it is dark and leave it going all night. If there are cloudy skies it will automatically switch itself off, and we have positioned it as far away from the main trunk railway as possible so that the effects of the occasional heavy freight trains, which
cause noticeable vibra-
tions, are mini-
mised."

The lottery
money
has



financed the purchase of a new finderscope lens which enables the Hudsons to search a wider star field, a Hubble Guide Star Catalogue on CD, a PC emulator to run software and development work, and an oscilloscope to check and detect problems in PC boards when developing new hardware for different projects in the observatory.

"Ultimately we are looking to fully automate the observatory," says Richard. "There are so many stars which need observing and there are not enough hours in the day to do it.

"At the moment it really works as a semi-automatic system. We can tell it to observe one star set and it will do that all night, but we eventually want it to monitor problems and be able to switch to other star sets.

"An automated observatory is being planned for the Wairarapa but this one is something of a prototype. It has been put in here to see what it is capable of and how fully automated we can get it."