ASTR 1110L, ASTR1120L, ASTR2030L

Indoor Lab Exercise #4

REAL STAR MAPS THANKS TO THE U.S. NAVY
In this lab, we are going to make some real star maps using a sophisticated web
site run by the U.S. Navy.
These maps can be generated anytime you need to see a starfield down to some mag
nitude. We will use
these maps to do some star-counts, an extremely useful tool for astronomers inte
rested in studying the
obscuring properties of the insterstellar medium. First go to the site and let s
make a simple star chart.
http://www.nofs.navy.mil/data/fchpix/
You need to select an RA and Dec. Choose 5h 00m 00s and +20 deg 00 00 . Let s make
it one degree (rectangle of size box).
Go with Catalog USNO B1.01
Now, this is important. Go to the magnitude box and choose 0 to 10 magnitudes.
R2 means Red filter number 2.
Then hit retrieve data. You should see our star chart with coordinates and stel
lar images down to magnitude 10.
Now change the magnitude range to 0 to 20 and hit retrieve.
Quite a difference.
Let s do some star counting. Change the size of the box to 10 arcminutes and mak
e a map of 0 to 18 magnitudes. Now, count the total number of stars in the box
and mark it down in a table with the magnitude and the number of stars you coun
ted.
Now, repeat for 0 to 17, then 0 to 16, and so on, till you get 0 to 9 magnitudes
. At this point you will have no stars in the box because there are no stars br
ighter than
10th magnitude in this box. Now plot the number of stars as a function of magn
itude.
Now, let s do the same thing for the region centered on the dark cloud, Lynds 134.
First, use the ADS or SIMBAD to look up the coordinates of L134. Now, look at a
10 x 10 region centered right on L134 (00h 51m 00s and +5 deg 30 00 ).
Plot your results on the same graph that you plotted the results of the random f
ield we chose.
What do you notice? What accounts for the discrepancy between the two plots?

What kind of interstellar object is L134?

If we were going to do this star counting procedure (which is called a Wolf diag
ram) correctly,
we should have picked a region to compare to L134 which is at the same Galactic

latitude.
The first order of business is to look up Galactic coordinates and explain what
them mean in the
space below:

Now, you need to find the Galactic Coordinates of L134. You can convert from RA
and Dec to
Galactic longitude and latitude (called l and b for historical reasons). In the old
days, we
used spherical trigonometric formulas to do the conversions. Now, you just go t
o a website:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/forms/calculator.html
What are the Galactic coordinates of L134?

What are the Galactic coordinates of the reference

field (the one at 5h)

What do you think would happen to the diagram you made if you went to regions wi
th higher Galactic latitude?

You should repeat what you did above but choose as your reference field (i.e., t
he field to compare the star counts you
Made for L134 with) one that is 2 degrees away from the L134 position in Galacti
c Longitude.
Show your Wolf diagram for L134 and its reference field. What can you say now a
bout the difference between the two
curves?