1. The Faulkes Telescope Project Deep Impact & Bioastronomy
Institute for Astronomy
University of Hawaii
K. Meech

2. Faulkes Telescope Project
Educational Partnership:
Educational Trust of Great Britain (UK)
Institute for Astronomy (HI)
Purpose: Astronomy Outreach
Location:
Haleakala, Maui Hawaii
Australia
Operations
Remote control from the UK & Hawaii
Observe from classrooms
Queue Scheduled
30% of evenings for Hawaii

3. The Faulkes Telescope Professional Telescope Optical Detector
2-m f/10 primary – alt/azimuth
12 arc min FOV
Guider to 17th mag
Optical Detector
EEV CCD42-20 CCD: 2048x2048 pixels (0.135”)
4.6 x 4.6’ FOV
Filters: Sloan u', g', r', i', z', B, V, ND
Future instruments:
Near IR imager
Spectrograph

4. Project Status MOU 6/26/99 Enclosure – Scotland Ship: 7/02
Install 11/22/02
Telescope ship 8/02
Site blessing 11/02/01
Telescope
Install 1/23/03
Electronics 7/03
First light 8/03
Operations Oct 04
Phase 1 construction – 3/2002

5. Faulkes Education Program
TOPS Education Outreach Program – S’03 (NSF/NASA)
Take “master teachers”
Train for remote observing
Simulate the Faulkes Experience
3 days learning to plan observations
1 day planning, learn web interface
Receive data, learn image processing
1 weekend to analyze data and formulate a report
Astrobiology & Deep Impact

6. What can students do? Young Variables: star form Kuiper Belt Studies
Colors & physical study
Recovery  orbits
Comet Studies
Rotation
Space mission support
NEO Characterization

7. What can students do? Extrasolar Planet Transits
Synoptic Studies of Jupiter
Rotation
Synoptic Studies of Mars
Dust storms
Courtesy of D. Charbonneau, Caltech

8. Project Goals Develop a teacher mentor network of teachers
Astronomer-teacher liasons
Provide software
Develop an image data archive
Increase astronomy content in classrooms
Curriculum materials
Science fair participation