5 Summary of Week 4

This week you have learned about the objects in the Messier catalogue and used your knowledge of the equatorial coordinate system to decide which object to image, depending on the time of year.

Using this information you have programmed COAST to take an image or images of your chosen object. If the weather in Tenerife has been fine, you should by now have your first astronomical image! (If not, your image will be taken as soon as the weather allows. Please be patient and check back in another day or so.)

This completes the first half of this course. In the next four weeks you will learn more about the life cycles of the stars and how they are classified, and build on your imaging skills in order to use COAST to investigate variable stars, combining your results with others to form a light curve.

You are now halfway through the course. The Open University would really appreciate your feedback and suggestions for future improvement in our optional end-of-course survey [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] , which you will also have an opportunity to complete at the end of Week 8. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

You can now go to Week 5.