Technical

THE AOSR:

“AOSR” is a Portuguese amateur project dedicated to the discovery of supernovae. The observatory is located somewhere in Moita – Portugal.

THE BUILDING:
The observatory is made of steel, its dimensions are 4.5m x 5.1m, divided into two sections. The first section has the “array” mounts . The second section has the servers. AOSR Observatory is prepared to be controlled locally or remotely.

OPTICS:
Two schmidt cassegrains 203mm aperture 2032 mm focal length (f/10)

CCD:
Two CCD – ICX-285AL Pixel Size 6.45 µM x 6.45 µM Termoelectric set point ΔT=-25°C regulated.
Two CCD – ICX-424AL Pixel Size 7.4 µM x 7.4 µM (for guiding) Termoelectric set point ΔT=-20°C

MOUNT:
Two fixed equatorial mounts

CONTROL:
O/S and a set of software that interacts between to search and analyze. more info…

HOW AOSR WORKS:
The search program consists of three parts, target list generation, telescope pointing and image aquisition.

1. Generate a list of galaxy targets suitable for a night’s observing run. This also generates a list that can be used to download reference DSS images.

2. A script that controls the mount and camera and successively points the telescope to each galaxy on the list, acquiring a set of images of each target.

3. A script that enable quick comparison of these images to reference images downloaded from the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS).

Between 150 to 300 galaxies can be observed in an automated overnight run. Using individual exposures, supernovae down to mag 18 should be detectable.