CSL News Archive
Viewing the Universe with an iPhone: Jeff Terry, Professor of Physics, Breaks New Ground with Mobile Devices
On March 8th, 2008 at 9:30 pm, Jeff Terry, Professor of Physics, took control of a Global-Rent-A-Scope (GRAS) telescope located near Cloudcroft, NM from Chicago, IL using his Apple iPhone. Using the iPhone's Safari web browser, Terry positioned the telescope to view the Orion Nebula (M42) and used the telescope's mounted camera to collect images of the celestial object, marking the first time that an iPhone has been used for this purpose.
This remote image of M42 was collected using the GRAS001 telescope guided by an iPhone.
This feat was accomplished using Global-Rent-A-Scope (GRAS), a global network of high-performance telescopes made available to professional and amateur astronomers who control the telescopes remotely from anywhere in the world. The GRAS project supports many educational activities through their StarPals youth astronomy network. IIT students began using the GRAS telescopes for a supernovae search at the start of 2008, allowing them to search the skies from nearly any point in the world.
Professor Terry has long searched for ways to make active astronomy more accessible to students, including the student astronomers that he works with in the IIT Society of Physics Students. In 2001, Terry developed software, iCCD, to capture and process astronomical images for Macs running OS X. When he heard that some universities were considering giving iPhones to incoming freshmen, Terry saw the possibilities. "Many students may not be able to afford their own computers, and this will allow anyone with an iPhone or iPod touch to perform remote astronomical observations, affordably," he says. We believe that processing software hosted on remote servers will be written to facilitate image processing by students through an iPhone.
Terry is developing software that facilitates remote telescope control and image gathering for the iPhone, which will support third-party applications starting in June.
For more information about Prof. Terry's astronomy research visit www.macastroimager.com.
For more information about Global-Rent-A-Scope visit www.global-rent-a-scope.com.
2011 Kilpatrick Lecture | George Whitesides
(03/27/2012)
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MSED Chair Norman Lederman Appointed Distinguished Professor
(03/21/2011)
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NARST Honors IIT's Norman Lederman for Lifetime Contributions to Science Education Research
(02/17/2011)
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MSED's Lederman Named AERA Fellow, Second Fellowship in 2010
Norman Lederman, professor and chair of the Mathematics and Science Education Department, has been selected to become a Fellow of the American Education Research Association (AERA).
(02/22/2010)
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MSED Chair Norman Lederman Named AAAS Fellow for Distinguished Leadership in Science Education
Lederman was recently awarded the distinction of Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society.
(12/23/2009)
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CSL Colloquium Connects Humanities and Computer Science
More than 130 humanities and computer science scholars and students came to IIT's Main Campus in November for the fourth annual Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science, or DHCS.
(12/04/2009)
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IIT CS Researchers Receive Nearly $1.4M in NSF Grants
Three IIT computer scientists have recently been awarded major grants totaling $1,383,835 from the National Science Foundation, for work to be done in networks, simulation, and high-end computing.
(09/22/2009)
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Stolley Receives Digital Production/Scholarship Award
Karl Stolley, assistant professor of technical communication, received the Computers and Composition Michelle Kendrick Outstanding Digital Production/Scholarship Award in June at the Computers & Writing Conference.
(08/27/2009)
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Nearly 200 Physicists to Gather on Main Campus for Nufact09 International Workshop
Scientists are gathering from all over the world July 20-25 to discuss how best to learn new things about the universe given the exciting discoveries that have occurred in the last few years about the strange behavior of neutrinos.
(07/14/2009)
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Xian-He Sun Gives Keynote Speech at INFOSCALE09 in Hong Kong
Xian-He Sun, professor of computer science and director of IIT's Scalable Computing Software Laboratory, gave the keynote speech "Reevaluating Amdahl's Law in the Multicore Era" at INFOSCALE09 on June 10 in Hong Kong.
(06/22/2009)
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Computer Science Alumnus Chih-Wei Yi Named Outstanding Young Engineer by the Chinese Institute of Engineers
Yi (Ph.D., CS, 2005) was named an Outstanding Young Engineer by the Chinese Institute of Engineers. Yi was a doctoral student of Professor Peng-Jun Wan and is an assistant professor of computer science, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
(06/10/2009)
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Prof. Christena Nippert-Eng Presents Open Lecture Series at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design
During the week of May 8-15, associate professor of sociology Christena Nippert-Eng gave a series of three lectures on her privacy research to the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID), including the school's Open Lecture on May 11th.
(05/28/2009)
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2009 CSL Undergraduate Summer Research Report
Eight undergraduates in the College of Science and Letters were named recipients of a 2009 CSL Undergraduate Summer Research Stipend, providing them with $5,000 for 10 weeks of research under faculty guidance.
(03/25/2009)
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