Feb. 1 – Feb. 9 Weekend Edition: Get your Unistellar eVscopes and help observe exoplanets!

Dear Unistellar eVscope users,

It’s time for another Unistellar eVscope exoplanet citizen science campaign. We would love your help observing some exoplanets, so if you want to join us in some planet hunting, then charge up those eVscopes and get ready because we need your help over the next few weekends!

If you didn’t catch my recent posts on this topic, my name is Dan Peluso and I am doing my PhD in astrophysics with Franck Marchis (astronomer at the SETI Institute) and as a portion of my research I want to see if it is possible for any astronomy enthusiast around the world to coordinate with planet hunting scientists like us to help contribute to the search for planets around other stars (a.k.a. exoplanets).

Currently, one of the best planet hunting missions in operations is NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (a.k.a. TESS). Although NASA’s TESS is an amazing instrument, it still needs help in confirming and gathering additional data on the exoplanets it is attempting to observe. This is where YOU come in!

Exoplanet searches usually require elaborate setups, lots of study, maybe a fancy degree, and a sky mostly free of light pollution. With new technologies, such as with the new Unistellar eVscope and the citizen science network we are developing in coordination with the SETI Institute that is no longer the case!

Check out the article, Unistellar Consumer Telescope Will Help Astronomers Probe Exoplanets.

The Unistellar eVscope has already proven its capabilities to observe the transit of an exoplanet (see image 1 below).

Image 1: Transit light curve of WASP-43b. Observed with one Unistellar eVscope in March 2019 by Emmanuel Arbouch.

However, now we want to experiment with the possibilities of many eVscope users observing the same exoplanet and at the same time! Additionally, what will combining the data from many eVscopes do in helping us to learn more about these distant worlds? Can you and your eVscope help NASA TESS and other exoplanet scientists better understand these distant worlds? Ready to find out? I am! If you are too, then please read on for directions and details.

Note: There are two observations over the next two weekends listed in this post. Please be encouraged to observe both of them, if you can, but note that only the February 8th target is a TESS object of interest. 

Unistellar eVscope Exoplanet Observing Directions

1. Review the suggested exoplanet transit observations below. Pick the most convenient target for you, but keep in mind your local weather may affect your observing ability. Additionally, you are encouraged to attempt all of the listed targets, if possible.
2. To make sure that there is enough space on your eVscope to collect data, download any previous data on your phone, then connect to your WiFi and upload it to our server. To do this, click on “User”, then after it loads, click on “DOWNLOAD DATA”. Wait for it to finish and you will not want to use your phone while this downloads. After it downloads to phone, disconnect phone from eVscope, turn off eVscope, and connect your phone to your home high-speed WiFi network. Now select “UPLOAD DATA”.
3. Make sure to charge your eVscope so it has enough charge for the ~4 hour observation
4. Set up about 20-30 minutes before the observation start time
5. After you connect to eVscope point at some bright stars and focus and then auto-align. Make sure it says alignment is successful
6. After alignment, go to “Explore”, then scroll to the bottom and select “GoTo Ra/Dec” under the “Advanced” menu.
7. Enter your RA and Dec (listed below for each target). Double check your numbers and then hit GoTo
8. Once the telescope finds your target look at the example FOV (field of view) provided for each target. Can you find your target? This is where your pattern recognition skills come in to play. If you need to slightly adjust your FOV use the joystick until the target is centered like in the example.
9. Click on Enhanced Vision (the “eye”).
10. Your eVscope should now track the object the rest of the observation.
11. Enjoy a movie, television show, book, time with family or friends, a nap, or whatever you’d like to do while your eVscope conducts the observation.
12. Come back at the observation’s end time and cap your eVscope with its provided dust cap and take some “dark frames”. To take “dark frames”, all you have to do is make sure Enhanced Vision is still running and then put the dust cap on the eVscope, wait about 30 seconds, remove it, turn off Enhanced Vision, and you’re done!
13. Park your eVscope, turn if off, and celebrate because you are officially an exoplanet hunter!
14. Send us the data by downloading the data on your phone, then connecting to your wifi and uploading it to our server (I recommend sending the data to our server while you sleep, so if you’re going to bed soon, it wouldn’t hurt to have this run while you sleep. Step 1 has details on how to do this.

GROUP A (USA)
Saturday, February 1, 2020
Exoplanet Observation Details –> HAT-P-32

Date of observation:

Saturday, February 1, 2020

Observation Time: 

6:29 pm – 10:59 pm, Pacific Standard Time

*Hey, guess what? You don’t even have to be with your eVscope this entire time! I’ve done observations this long and after setting up went inside to catch up on my favorite show or enjoyed some reading.

IMPORTANT: PLEASE CHECK THE WEATHER so if you leave your eVscope out it is not damaged by rain/snow!!!

Target:

Celestial Coordinates:

Right Ascension (RA) –> 02:04:10.28
Declination (Dec) –> +46:41:16.2

(don’t forget that positive sign for your dec)! 😉

FOV of Target HAT-P-32

FOV of HAT-P-32 from observer, F. Marchis, San Francisco, CA. Make sure to double check that your FOV looks similar to this with the target (circled in red here) centered. 

GROUP A (USA)
Saturday, February 8, 2020
Exoplanet Observation Details –> TESS Target, TOI 959.01

Date of observation:

Saturday, February 8, 2020

Observation Time: 

7:38 pm – 12:00 am, Pacific Standard Time

*Hey, guess what? You don’t even have to be with your eVscope this entire time! I’ve done observations this long and after setting up went inside to catch up on my favorite show or enjoyed some reading.

IMPORTANT: PLEASE CHECK THE WEATHER so if you leave your eVscope out it is not damaged by rain/snow!!!

Target:

Celestial Coordinates:

Right Ascension (RA) –> 07:36:02.99
Declination (Dec) –> +04:42:54.42

(don’t forget that positive sign for your dec)! 😉

FOV of Target TOI 959.01

FOV of TOI 959.01 from observer, F. Marchis, San Francisco, CA. Make sure to double check that your FOV looks similar to this with the target (circled in red here) centered. 

GROUP B (FRANCE)
Saturday, February 1, 2020 AND Saturday, February 8, 2020
Exoplanet Observation Details –> TESS Target, TOI 1259.01

Dates and times of observation:

• Date: Saturday, February 1, 2020 | Time: 21:50 – 02:39, Central European Standard Time (CET)
• Date: Saturday, February 8, 2020 | Time: 20:47 – 01:35, Central European Standard Time (CET)

*Hey, guess what? You don’t even have to be with your eVscope this entire time! I’ve done observations this long and after setting up went inside to catch up on my favorite show or enjoyed some reading.

**Since this is the same target, you can observe both events to improve our data analysis, or one or the other, if you can only do one.

IMPORTANT: PLEASE CHECK THE WEATHER so if you leave your eVscope out it is not damaged by rain/snow!!!

Target:

Celestial Coordinates:

Right Ascension (RA) –> 18:48:24.04
Declination (Dec) –> +79:15:23.31

(don’t forget that positive sign for your dec)! 😉

This is our new science goal for my PhD to use Unistellar eVscopes to find Baby Yoda! Lucasfilm/Walt Disney Pictures via Disney+