Investigating stars with amateur photographs

2011/04/14 Kortabitarte Egiguren, Irati - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Astrofisika
• Astronomia

The photographs of amateur photographers can help study the stars and equip themselves with the research carried out with professional telescopes. This has been deducted by astronomers Dustin Lang from the University of Princeton and David Hogg from the University of New York. In fact, amateur photographers have managed to visualize the trajectory of comet 17P/Holmes using images hung on the Internet.

To do this, we will first look for images of this comet on the Internet. Thousands were found. Some parameters of these photographs were analyzed (coordinates, date, time, size, orientation, orbital parameters of the object, etc.) And it was possible to build the comet route. The results coincide with those obtained with the large telescopes.

Image: Image: Dustin Lang and David W. Hogg Hogg