Over the last number of years some of the students in Coláiste Chríost Rí have been involved with the Faulkes telescope network.

An Cumann Realteolaíochta

Over the last number of years some of the students in Coláiste Chríost Rí have been involved with the Faulkes telescope network. This affords the students the opportunity to access and control two multi-million dollar telescopes, one in Hawaii and one in Australia. Above is an image of the sombrero galaxy which is 28 million light years from Earth. Students have taken several very good images of this galaxy. This year the astronomy club will be led by Robbie Wall and Caolan Smith. Below is an article from Education news which highlighted some of the work done by students in Colaiste Chriost Rí.

The Good, the Bad and the Pretty

As many of you will be aware, there have been ongoing problems with the camera on FTN over the last couple of months. The usual camera broke down in early March, and as a result, the telescope was unavailable for schools to use. Dill Faulkes, founder of the Faulkes Telescope Project, asked LCOGT to allow school users to have real-time access to the science camera, and earlier this month, the camera was up and running for all to use. The new camera on FTN has a slightly larger field of view than the previous camera (approx 10.36 arcmin x 10.22 arcmin instead of 4.6 arcmin x 4.6 arcmin) and as you can see below in the images of M8 and M21 taken by the Coláiste Chríost Rí school in Ireland, some of them are truly spectacular!