Advanced Student Laboratory
Our group offers three different practica in the context of the advanced student lab, which are part of the Physics Practicum 3+4.
Astrowoche
Astrowoche is a practica week in the winter semester break. Usually, the practica takes place at the guest house Diavolezza (2978 m). Providing optical and radio telescopes, we offer various experiments and observations of stars, nebulas, galaxies, and artificial objects. The number of participants is limited to 20 students that can build a team up to 4 people per experiment. The successful completion of the practica counts as 2 VP points. More informaiton can be found here.
HPP Telescope
On the roof of the HPP building, our group is operating a 50 cm telescope (corrected Dall-Kirkham design). The telescope is installed on a computerized equatorial mount, and as a CCD detector a SBIG STX-16803 camera is used, which can be equipped with various broad-band and narrow-band filters.
Students of the physics practicum 3+4 can sign up to conduct an experiment using this telescope. The students will learn the basics of optical astronomical observations, in particular photometry, astrometry, and astrophotography. They will be introduced to different observation and calibration strategies, and they will learn to reduce their data using basic scientific data reduction techniques and software commonly used in astronomy. More information can be found here.
Coronagraphy
Coronagraphy is a method for improving the imaging contrast allowing the observation of faint sources close to bright objects. The students will learn to setup an imaging optical bench used in coronagraphy, and control the active optics component, the SLM, demonstrating its power as a reprogrammable device for wavefront control. More information can be found here.