ICS2002-03-01: Bringing the Faulkes Telescope to Classrooms in Hawaii - B. Giebink

The Faulkes Telescope (FT), currently under construction on the summit of Haleakala, Maui, Hawaii, will provide data from celestial observations to schools in the United Kingdom and Hawaii. This project, with its unique goal of building a telescope to be used exclusively for educational purposes, is a joint venture between groups in the United Kingdom and Hawaii. Teachers and students will be able to download data that has been collected by the telescope on a previous occasion or sign up to have the telescope collect data at a specific time for them. Current plans call for data from the telescope to be delivered to classrooms in the form of raw data files and images from processed raw data files. In addition to sharing use of the telescope, part of the agreement between the UK and Hawaii groups provides for the UK group to share all software developed for the project with the Hawaii group. However, though a system for transporting images to schools is being developed for the UK side, at present there is no corresponding system for Hawaii. Also, at this point neither the British nor Hawaii sides have a definite system for storing and transporting raw data files. A first step, therefore, toward making the FT useful for students and teachers in Hawaii is to develop a plan for a complete system to archive and transport telescope data. It is anticipated that aplan for this system will include: 1) a specification of the required hardware components, 2) a description of how data will move in and out of the system, 3) a definition of the data pathway within the system, and 4) a description of the data storage requirements (i.e. database). The development of each of the components of the system will consist of a discussion of available options followed by a suggestion of the best choice of action. Development of this system is anticipated to be the topic for a directed reading/research project to be undertaken during spring,2002. After the system has been clearly defined there are some additional questions to be answered. Among the more interesting aspects is the question of how to present data from the telescope in the most useful and effective manner to teachers and students.

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