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  Session: Undergraduate Research
  Paper Type: Contributed
  Title: Seeking Exoplanets with Inexpensive Cameras
  Meeting: 2015 Winter Meeting: San Diego, California
  Location: N/A
  Date:
  Time: 10:00AM
  Author: Martin G. Connors, Athabasca University
780-435-8761, martinc@athabascau.ca
  Co-Author(s): Olivier Guyon, Josh Walawender
  Abstract: Every year sees better Digital Single Lens Reflex (DLSR) cameras come to market, with higher resolution, better lenses, and increased sensitivity. Most modern cameras can be attached to a computer for control and data download. These allow many levels of interaction with the night sky, from taking beautiful photos to quantitative analysis, all of which have appeal to students at various levels. On an inexpensive mount that gives pointing and tracking ability, a DSLR can survey an impressive amount of "real estate" in the Galaxy. The images can be analyzed on a computer to look for changes in stellar brightness that range from dramatic in the case of eclipsing binary or pulsating stars, to very subtle in the case of transits of exoplanets in front of their star. We explore the rapidly developing technologies that allow undergraduates to do cutting-edge astronomical research, highlighting Project Panoptes (http://projectpanoptes.org).
  Footnotes: None
  Presentation: SeekingExoplanets.pptx

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