We recently captured up with Unistellars Chief Scientific Officer Franck Marchis, (likewise Senior Planetary Astronomer at the SETI Institute), on where astronomy with these special telescopes might be headed.
Already, Unistellar projects have looked at Patroclus, Orus and 11351 Leucus, in assistance of NASAs Lucy Mission to the Trojan asteroids.
Groups have likewise followed near-Earth asteroids with the Unistellar telescope, characterizing their rotation rate as they change in brightness. And speaking of far-off things, users have recently used Unistellar telescopes to track the James Webb Space Telescope en path to its brand-new home at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point.
Provided as a Kickstarter task in 2017, Unistellars line now consists of the eVscope eQuinox, and the brand-new eVscope2.
The anatomy of Unistellars eVScope. Credit: Unistellar.
The Age of Smartscopes
But beyond simply supplying pretty photos and a tour of the night sky, eVscope users are contributing to some major science, in a huge method. This is always the hallmark of any brand-new advancement in technology: you never understand what wonderful and wild directions that people will take it in, once its released. We recently captured up with Unistellars Chief Scientific Officer Franck Marchis, (also Senior Planetary Astronomer at the SETI Institute), on where astronomy with these unique telescopes might be headed.
Unistellars eVscope has proven its ability to do serious astronomy, with more to come in 2022.
Smartscopes– telescopes managed from another location via smart devices or tablets– are making there method into the contemporary amateur telescope market and out into the field. Provided as a Kickstarter project in 2017, Unistellars line now consists of the eVscope eQuinox, and the new eVscope2.
” As an astronomer, when you arrive in a control room, everything is prepared: you simply get in the coordinates, or just the name of the target,” says Marchis. “I constantly questioned why we do not do that for amateur astronomers.”
Weve just recently reviewed the eVscope, eQuinox telescope, and the primary competitor on the marketplace, Vaoniss Stellina. Unistellars eVscope and eQuinox are constructed around an easy 4.5-inch mirror reflector. The system is light-weight and ultra-portable at 19.8 pounds (9kg). Setup is as basic as locking the system on the tripod, bonding it to the app through WiFi, adjusting the focus, and letting the scope plate-solve its area and pointing direction in the sky.
But its the science efforts underway with Unistellar that truly set it apart. The Unistellar application has a tab devoted simply to science and astronomy campaigns.
One distinct effort is looking at asteroid occultations of bright stars. These events include a background star winking out briefly as the foreground asteroid moves in front of it, casting a shadow throughout the Earth. If enough observers can catch and time these cords, we can lay out the profile shape of the asteroid. Tiny unseen moonlets of asteroids have actually likewise been observed as short events near the primary occultation. Currently, Unistellar projects have actually taken a look at Patroclus, Orus and 11351 Leucus, in assistance of NASAs Lucy Mission to the Trojan asteroids.
eVscope exoplanet transit information. Credit: Unistellar.
Next up, Unistellar campaigns have made followup observations of transiting exoplanets. Currently, Unistellar has actually shown this capability during campaigns to keep track of Kepler-167b and HD 80606 b, and sends out alerts for regular upcoming events.
Unistellar resident astronomer Kevin Voeller likewise just recently collected information on exoplanet WASP-148b.
Which pleads the concern of the possibility for users to find planets as well. Certainly, the capability is there for dedicated networks of Unistellar scopes. The telescope might also be utilized to follow and keep track of variable stars and find stellar novae and extra-galactic supernovae also.
Teams have likewise followed near-Earth asteroids with the Unistellar telescope, identifying their rotation rate as they fluctuate in brightness. One such current project revolved around the close Earth flybys of asteroids 1994 PC1 and 4660 Nereus. This is all part of Unistellars planetary defense effort; you cant have a lot of telescopes out there around the world trying to find flying space rocks.
Asteroid 1994 PC1 on its closest technique to Earth. Credit Dave Dickinson.
And speaking of distant things, users have just recently used Unistellar telescopes to track the James Webb Space Telescope en path to its brand-new house at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point. Almost a million miles from the Earth, JWST moves like a remote satellite versus the starry background. Unistellar has recorded 110 JWST observations hence far, and noted the irregularity of the observatory after sunshield release as a 6 hour flash or glint, seen generally due to the rotational position of the observer on Earth.
JWST, imaged with an eVscope2. Image credit: Greg Redfern.
” Our neighborhood is delighted that they see this, that they link to JWST so its really good outreach, and excellent science,” states Marchis. “finding out that the sparkle off JWST happens and why it occurs could be beneficial in the future.”
This also raises the possibility of using a Unistellar telescope to track satellites (perhaps even categorized, unpublished satellites) in remote High Earth (HEO) or geostationary/geosynchronous (GEO) orbits.
Lastly, the eVscope has the prospective to track and find comets. Currently, weve seen users follow the great apparitions of comet F3 NEOWISE in 2020 and A1 Leonard at the end of 2021.
Comet A1 Leonard, from late 2021. Credit: Dave Dickinson
Whats next for Unistellar? Later this year, the team plans to lead efforts to follow an occultation of asteroid Didymos near Abu Dhabi, leading up to the impact of NASAs DART objective on the asteroids tiny moon Dimorphos on September 26th, 2022. The group likewise has plans for satellite tracking, to include identifying the brightness of Starlink and OneWeb satellite constellations, improved access to information cloud storage and more.
” The crucial part is that were not simply a business that which is constructing telescopes,” says Marchis. “We see ourselves as a business that is democratizing astronomy, so people can delight in the dark sky.”
Simply the current Unistellar user data alone are outstanding:
2021 summary stats for exoplanet transits:
-413 observations by 100 different observers in 17 countries, with 92 detections.
2021 summary stats for planetary defense:
-11 campaigns, by 95 users submitting 290 observations from 20 nations.
2021 summary data for asteroid occultations:
-214 occultation occasions attempted with 395 observations, 106 are positive (for a ~ 27% positivity rate).
With the arrival of the eVscope, we may be viewing as huge a transformation in amateur astronomy as the intro of Celestrons orange-tube C8 telescope in the early 1970s. Having actually lived through the last half-century of amateur astronomy, its just remarkable how much has altered. Expect more exciting astronomy to come!
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