– There are a variety of projects that can be
accomplished using the 16" Schmidt Cassegrain telescope
located at the Fort
Lewis Observatory in Hesperus.
Many of these involve measuring the change in brightness
of an object
over time. Some of
- Supernovae – The luminosity vs.
time is different for different types of supernovae.
You can determine the distance to a distant galaxy
using these "standard candles".
– Track a minor planet (like an asteroid or comet) and
determine its proper motion and tumble rates.
(Will the Earth survive the next pass?!)
– These are changing their luminosity for some known (or
unknown!) reason. There
are lots of these out there, and you might research one that has not
been studied before.
– Most of the really cool Hubble pictures that you see
on-line are "false" color.
These photographs typically use a very narrow band
filter to "see" only the light from a specific
– These can be determined by comparing the emission from
different spectral regions.
Observatory Remote Operations
– There are a variety of engineering and control type projects that can be complete to help the at the Fort
Lewis Observatory in Hesperus.
The goal would be complete remote control of all aspects of an imaging
session, including telescope pointing, flat field aquisition, dome
control, and data archiving.
- The Colorado Space Grant Consortium regularly launches balloons with
small, student designed and built payloads. Many of these
projects would be appropriate for a senior design project.
Colorado Robot Challenge - Another Space Grant sponsored project. Fort Lewis has not previously participated, but it sure sounds like fun.
– There are a variety of modeling and
simulation projects that can be done using the OPNET computer tool. Some of these projects include:
propagation and interference – Why
won't your wireless router work through that stone wall? Why doesn't
your Bluetooth device interfere with your web surfing?
They both run at 2.45GHz, just like your microwave
oven. (Why would
they do that, anyway?!)
– Explore the issues that crop up when communicating with a
built in time delay. You
can research the interactions between the various protocol layers
(Physical, MAC (Ethernet), TCP, IP, Application).
Changing parameters depending on your specific system
could decide if your satellite system is profitable or not.
- Bit error
– Can you successfully send a message over a very noisy line
with lots of bit errors? (The
answer is yes.)
- Geolocation – This is the
inverse GPS problem. Instead
of finding your location using signals transmitted from four
satellites, you use four satellites to determine the location of a
single transmitter. The "simple" time of signal propagation method has
already been implemented in OPNET. However, there are several
other techniques, including determining location using Doppler shift
measurements, that would be needed for a more general purpose routine. A more challenging problem
is to either combine different techniques when there is minimal
received information, or to use a single searching device during
multiple timesteps to find your target.
Calculating the correct error ellipse is a non-trivial