The observation of globular clusters with an optical telescope

Abstract

Different optical telescopes have different applications because of their advantages and disadvantages. Depending on the application a specific mount needs to be chosen between Alt-azimuth and Equatorial. They both require alignment but the Equatorial mount requires a longer method that will result in a very accurate tracking. The most accurate method to Polar align an Equatorial Mounted telescope is the drift method which was chosen to align the telescope in this study. A monochrome CCD camera was used to image deep sky objects such as Globular Clusters. The procedure for imaging will be described. Image formats and the Stacking process will also be explained. Then the obtained image will be analyzed using SExtractor to try and identify and count the approximate number of stars that the provided equipment managed to resolve.