Introduction
Capturing images through a telescope with a detector is an example of photometry, a branch of optics that deals with measuring light in terms of brightness. In an ideal environment, light would travel straight from an object to the telescope and land on the detector onto a single pixel. However, due to imperfections such as atmospheric effects, light pollution, or other sources of error, noise is introduced when images are captured. Many of these sources of error can be corrected so that data can be used for scientific research. To ensure that the facility is capable of adjusting for this noise, we will utilize images captured of sources of certain kinds of variable stars, and compare our calculations to those taken by other astronomers. Some properties of these stars, such as their distances and luminosities, can be calculated using the data produced from these stars. The goal of this project is to reproduce known measurements of variable stars to better understand the capabilities of the UMBC Observatory’s facility and data calibration pipeline.
Author: Connor Kragh
Editor: Jacob Rubinstein
Date: 20240910