Observations site

General information

To observe with Telesto, follow the instructions of the User manual: 
User manual Telesto 

At the end of the night, please fill in a night report:
Telesto night report

Some possible targets and telescope settings can be found here: 
Examples

If you have some problems you can have a look in here:
Troubleshooting

If you have any additional issue, do not try to solve it yourself, but contact someone:
Contacts

If you want to take calibration frames (biases, darks, flats):
Calibration frames

Observing the Sun
Observing the planets/moon with stellarium

During the observations

1. Use the webcam to see the telescope and check that everything is ok
2. Check weather conditions to avoid condensation or wind problems
1. Humidity and temperature
2. Wind and other information

   3. Close the dome under one of these conditions:

• [Temperature] < [dew point + 3]. For example, if the dew point is 10°, close the dome if the temperature is below 13°
• Wind faster than 15 m/s (54 km/h)
  

Suggestions

Target size on the sky

To understand the size of a target on the Telesto detector, compute the size of the object in the sky first. Then compare it with the resolution of the telescope and see if it is visible. 

Example - Galaxy M51
Galaxy diameter = 60'000 light years
Galaxy distance = 31'000'000 light years
Telescope resolution (1x1 binning) = 0.34 arcseconds/pixel
Size on the sky = diameter/distance = 0.0019 radians = 392 arcseconds. 
Number of covered pixels = size/resolution = 1153 pixels. 

So you can expect your galaxy to cover about 1153x1153 pixels on you detector. 
Remember, the detector measures 4096x4096 pixels!

Focuser

A good starting point of the focus is 5300. If you see that your target is blurred, try to change this value using multiples of 50-100. 

Filters

There are two kinds of filters: Broadband (R,G,B etc.) and Narrowband (H-alpha). To create a beautiful image of an astronomical object, it is common to take 3 different images with the R, G and B filters and combine them in a colored image afterwards. To find some Python code with which you can create an image, go here.

Exposure time

Some examples of good starting points as exposure time can be seen here below. Of course, each target is different, so feel free to adjust it according to your specific target.