Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur, Calern, France

As part of final year, the astrophysics students in UCC spend a week in an observatory abroad gaining hands-on experience. For the class of 2014, the location was the Centre Pedagogique Planete et Univers on the Calern Plateau near Nice, France. The C2PU observatory houses one working telescope called Omicron and one being refurbished called Epsilon (going live in late 2014). Omicron is a 1m Cassegrain reflector mounted on a computer-controlled base. The 1060mm parabolic mirror can be used independently for wide field imaging or together with the 255mm hyperbolic mirror as a Cassegrain to conduct photometry or polarimetry. Software developed by the team at OCA enables observers to control the direction of the telescope, its pointing, the focus, and the movement of the dome. Users can enter azimuthal or equatorial coordinates, enter names of objects listed in the SIMBAD database, or select listed solar system objects.

The western telescope in C2PU, Omicron.

A blurry photo of the software controls.

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© Simon Henleywillis, 2014