The NeST homepage

An observing facility for students at CUO .

The NeST on top of our world. The instrument was financed with a grant from the Bodil Pedersen Foundation.

The Telescope and its instrumentation:

The NeST is a 250 mm Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope from MEADE with a focal leigth of 1600 mm which gives it a rather fast f-ratio (6.7). This optical configuration was chosen to give the widest possible field of view and to make the telescope fast with respect to imaging faint objects. For lunar and planetary imaging eyepiece projection equipment is used to increase magnification.

Besides accessories for visual observations the telescope is equiped with a CCD-camera from Santa Barbara Instrument Group - a ST-6 camera.
This camera has a 375x242 sq.pixel Texas Instruments chip inside and is equipped with a 16 bit A/D-converter which thus makes it able to register 65536 grey levels.

Observing programs:

The main objective for operating a telescope like NeST is to give the students a chance to use a modern instrument with high tech equipment under conditions similar to the ones found at the worlds large observatories but - of course - on a smaller scale.

NeST is used by students to make observations "just for fun" like making neat little images of neat little comets but it is also used for more serious projects. Every spring term the freshmen (students in their 1st year at the university) do a project as a part of the course "Physics 1". In the spring of 1996 groups of students did their project work with the NeST performing differential photometry of a pulsating variable star of the Delta-Scuti type obtaining rather good light-curves for the star. Also a Colour-Magnitude diagram for an open cluster was produced.

Physics 1 Exercises:

For Physics 1 students doing exercises at NeST the NeST Manual is of vital importance. This manual contains information about the telescope in general and specific information for doing the exercises.

The NeST is SUPERvised by US !