Introduction
Having spent the last three weeks building up your skills with Stellarium and knowledge of the night sky and telescopes it is now time to start using COAST and the telescope.org website to take your first astronomical images.
This week you will take a look at the Messier catalogue – this is a collection of some of the most spectacular objects that you can see in the night sky. You will learn about the different types of objects mentioned by Alan in the video and select one of these Messier objects to be the first image that you will take with COAST.
To take your image you will submit an observation request to COAST and, sometime later when the request has been completed, collect that image. We hope that you are excited as we are to see what you achieve with your first use of COAST.
By the end of this week you will be able to:
- distinguish between the various types of Messier objects
- request an image from COAST using the telescope.org interface
- collect and view your images from COAST using the telescope.org interface.
Course forum
Each week of this course has its own forum allowing you to communicate with the course authors and fellow participants to make connections, share ideas and ask questions.
OpenLearn - Astronomy with an online telescope
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