Module One – Design in Astrophysics
The focus of this part of the course will be a design study for an astronomical spacecraft. It will last one week with the final presentations on the last day. The students will make use of lectures, tutorials and library facilities to assemble a review of the state of knowledge for such a proposed instrumentation challenge. They will work in parallel in 5-6 competing teams made up of half British and half Spanish students. The aim will be to produce a well thought-out presentation after a week of intensive work. The major aspects to be covered will be:
- A summary of the scientific objectives
- An indication of the overall approach to the task and the reasons for the selection of the particular design
- A detailed discussion of the various features in the design solution that was adopted
- The presentation of experiment simulations, models etc.
Module Two – Observational Astronomy
This second module of the course will provide just the Southampton students with a unique opportunity to make a number of quantitative observations at the Teide Observatory, Izana (altitude 2400 m). They will use the 50 cm Mons telescope which is equipped with a CCD camera, and a smaller portable telescope (LX200), also using a CCD camera. In recent years we have also been given access to the research-class IAC-80 0.8 m telescope which employs a large, liquid nitrogen ncooled CCD camera. It is expected that the students will typically spend at least 8 hours per night for 5 nights working on this part of the course.
Module Three - Analysing Data and Reporting Results
The third part of this course takes place after the return from Tenerife. Here, students are required to choose and carry out a scientific project for which observations were obtained during Module Two. After completing their analysis and interpretation of the observations, they have to write a report in the form of a scientific paper on their work and prepare a poster on the same project. Both the report and the poster are assessed, the latter during a poster session in which students present their poster to members of the astronomy group.