This website is intended to give an overview of the 3rd Year Astronomy Lab completed as part of the Physics course at The University of Western Australia in 2006. We carried out the lab in the recently constructed dome on the roof of the Physics building with a Meade 12" LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope on an Alt-Azimuth mount. Images were captured using a Meade Pixtor 216XT CCD Camera with 3.7 x 2.7 arcmin field of view, controlled by a PC using the MaximDL software package.

The aim of the lab was to become familiar with the operation of the telescope and CCD camera, and to perform photometry on the star GSC 6776-0049 and its surrounding star field, with the hope of determining the limiting magnitude of our observation setup. Images were also taken of interesting night sky objects such as Saturn, Jupiter, and the Sombrero Galaxy (M104). The transit of Io behind Jupiter was also observed and recorded. We gained experience using a variety of software packages to align & stack images, and perform photometric analysis.

The aims of performing photometry on a star and becoming familiar with the working principles and operation of the telescope and CCD camera were achieved. Use the links above to explore the results of our lab, and obtain more information on the apparatus & software used, as well as the star GSC 6776-0049.