Farm Cove Observatory (FCO) was an amateur astronomical

observatory An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysics, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed. Th ...

in Pakuranga,

Auckland Auckland ( ; ) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. It has an urban population of about It is located in the greater Auckland Region, the area governed by Auckland Council, which includes outlying rural areas and ...

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

, where

Jennie McCormick Jennie Margaret McCormick , FRASNZ (; born 1963) is a New Zealand amateur astronomer and asteroid discoverer who conducts astronomical research from the Farm Cove Observatory in Auckland. She discovered the asteroid officially named New Zealand a ...

discovered the main-belt asteroid 386622 New Zealand in September 2009. Built in 2000, the observatory had a Meade LX200R 14" Schmidt-Cassegrain F/10 telescope, purchased and on loan from Ohio State University Astronomy Dept. The observatory used an SBIG ST8XME

CCD CCD may refer to: Science and technology * Charge-coupled device, an electronic light sensor used in various devices including digital cameras * .ccd, the filename extension for CloneCD's CD image file * Carbonate compensation depth, a property ...

camera with clear filter for data acquisition, this camera was supplied by the Centre for Backyard Astrophysics. FCO was only used for astronomical research. Farm Cove Observatory took part in

cataclysmic variable star In astronomy, cataclysmic variable stars (CVs) are stars which irregularly increase in brightness by a large factor, then drop back down to a quiescent state. They were initially called novae (), since those with an outburst brightness visible t ...

(CV) research for the Center for Backyard Astrophysics and was also known as CBA Pakuranga. Up to January 2006, FCO had contributed to over 1400 hours of data to the CBA, and the data from this observatory has been used in a number of scientific paper

In April 2004 Farm Cove Observatory joined the MicroFUN collaboratio

headed by Professor Andrew Gould at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

. The mission of MicroFUN is to obtain intense photometric monitoring of high magnification

gravitational microlensing Gravitational microlensing is an astronomical phenomenon caused by the gravitational lens effect. It can be used to detect objects that range from the mass of a planet to the mass of a star, regardless of the light they emit. Typically, astronom ...

events in the hope of detecting planets orbiting the lensing

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

. Most of these events are found in the dense star fields of the bulge of the

Milky Way The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the #Appearance, galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galax ...

galaxy A galaxy is a Physical system, system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar medium, interstellar gas, cosmic dust, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek ' (), literally 'milky', ...

. The first success came in April 2005 when an

exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet was in 1992 around a pulsar, and the first detection around a main-sequence star was in 1995. A different planet, first det ...

was detected in the event OGLE-2005-BLG-07

The discovery was attributed to 31 professional astronomers and two amateurs. FCO contributed 12 hours of observations to this event. This new planet is about three times the mass of

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...

and lies some 15,000

light-years A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly or lyr), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equal to exactly , which is approximately 9.46 trillion km or 5.88 trillion mi. As defined by the International Astro ...

toward the

Galactic Bulge In astronomy, a galactic bulge (or simply bulge) is a tightly packed group of stars within a larger star formation. The term almost exclusively refers to the group of stars found near the center of most spiral galaxies (see ''galactic spheroid'' ...

. This was only the second exoplanet detected by this technique and the first exoplanet discovery involving amateur observations. FCO had been contributing unfiltered magnitude measures to the

British Astronomical Association The British Astronomical Association (BAA) was formed in 1890 as a national body to support the UK's amateur astronomers. Throughout its history, the BAA has encouraged observers to make scientifically valuable observations, often in collaborat ...

campaign on

Blazar A blazar is an active galactic nucleus (AGN) with a relativistic jet (a jet composed of ionized matter traveling at nearly the speed of light) directed very nearly towards an observer. Relativistic beaming of electromagnetic radiation from the ...

OJ+287.

References

External links

Farm Cove Observatory

Center for Backyard Astrophysics

Sky & Telescope magazine article

{{Astronomical observatories in New Zealand Astronomical observatories in New Zealand Buildings and structures in Auckland 2000s architecture in New Zealand East Auckland