POSC 3616 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Light Curve, Spectroscopy, Adaptive Optics
14 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
Light- collecting area: a telescope"s diameter tells us its light- collecting area: area=pir^2, the largest telescopes currently in use have a diameter of about 10 meters. What are the two basic designs of telescopes: refracting telescope: focuses light with lenses, reflecting telescope: focuses light with mirrors. Imaging: astronomical detectors generally record only one color of light at a time. Spectroscopy: a spectrograph separates the different wavelengths of light before they hit the. Timing: a light curve represents a series of brightness measurements made over a period of time, many stars have a very regular pattern when put to this test. How does earth"s atmosphere affect ground- based observations: the best ground- based sites for astronomical observing are, calm (not too windy, high (less atmosphere to see through, dark (far from city lights, dry (few cloudy nights) Light pollution: scattering of human- made light in the atmosphere is a growing problem for astronomy.
