Next fall, a big change at the observatory will allow students to research more of the unknown: outer space.
The observatory is getting an upgrade to the camera on the 0.5 meter telescope and the control system.
“The camera on that [0.5 meter telescope] is a little past its best at this point. It’s not really taking images that are of scientific quality anymore. It’s still totally fine for some stargaze-type things, but for science, it’s a little lacking,” Co-Director for the Observatory, Andrew McNeill said.
When hired last year, McNeill, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, had the idea for these upgrades.
“As I was being hired, one of the things we asked for was, ‘could we have funding to get a new one [camera],’” McNeill said. “So, very recently, as of the start of this week [week of April 20], that official purchase has been made, we’re just waiting on it to arrive so that we can install it over the summer.”
“The last CCD [charge coupled device camera], I think, is about 20 years old or so. This is a relatively new one, so it’s brand new, but it’s not necessarily hot off the production lines in 2025. But it is twice as sensitive to light as the old one, so we’re gonna be able to go quite a bit fainter than we were before,” McNeill said. “So we’re gonna be able to observe objects that with that current camera, we wouldn’t be able to actually work with. So that opens up a lot of doors in terms of things we can actually look at.”
With the camera, he hopes students will be able to capture fast-moving objects in space.
“We can hopefully swing the camera a little bit faster to chase faster objects because I myself work on asteroids. Historically, it’s been used a little bit for asteroids, but it’s mostly stars and the nice thing about stars is if you’re observing they are always found at the same coordinates,” McNeill said. “So if you can find the star, you just stick with it and then you’re fine, with an asteroid, it’s a little more complicated because those move.”
The other main upgrade is with the control system for the telescope which has been the same since the mid 80’s.
“The main issue we had with that actually is it’s not a mechanical failure, it’s the computers. We can’t make a modern computer slow enough to talk to some of the older machinery,” McNeill. “No matter how much you can do it on, the new computers are too smart, so we need to have a new system where we can use these newer computers.”
With this advancement in technology, McNeill is hopeful that they will be able to join the Minor Planet Center hosted by Harvard and the Smithsonian.
“If we report observations of a good enough quality from our observatory, which we’ll be able to once we have all this stuff, we can officially be recognized as a minor planet center observatory,” McNeill said. “So we’ll get a designation code, so for a lot of the online websites where you can punch in, ‘I’m here and I want to observe stuff,’ we’re not there yet, but if we get that recognition, we will be on there.”
With this recognition, the observatory will put Bowling Green on the map of places that observe space and all it has to offer. Any student is welcome to help with this research, as long as they show a passion and interest for it.
“I don’t think there’s one answer to what an astronomer looks like or what somebody who can use the telescope looks like. But I would say anybody with an interest in working with data and working with images. Because what is a telescope if not a camera with an extremely good zoom on it,” McNeill said.
McNeill is hopeful that the upgrades will be put in this summer and tested so they are ready to go for the Fall semester.
