GEMINI OBSERVATORY/ ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITIES FOR RESEARCH IN ASTRONOMY This image of the young star RY Tau, seen inside a glowing gas cloud, was taken by an amateur Canadian astronomy club using the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea. Part of the glowing cloud is covered by dark gas, giving the appearance of two separate clouds.

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Star-gazers win
peek on peak

An astronomy club gets a chance
to use a Mauna Kea telescope

HILO » Beginning in 1993, an amateur astronomy club in the Canadian province of Quebec began studying a young star surrounded by a cloud of gas called RY Tau, 450 light years from Earth.

They did solid scientific work despite small telescopes that left the RY Tau area looking like fuzzy blips of light.

Last year, the Club d'astronomie de Dorval won a Canadian national contest to study their favorite star formation using one of the largest telescopes on Earth, the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea, a telescope with a main mirror 26 feet across. Canadian institutions are part owners of the telescope.

The star picture that the Club d'astronomie produced was to be revealed today at a meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society in Montreal. It shows the bright RY Tau inside a glowing cloud of gas, surrounded by other large and small star images.

"Our group knew that this object was unique and hadn't been observed in detail with a big telescope like Gemini," said club member Gilbert St.-Onge, who submitted the proposal. "I feel like we've not only made a pretty picture, but probably provided some new and valuable data for the pros."

Gemini astronomer Tracy Beck in Hilo confirmed that this is the most detailed image ever made of RY Tau and will provide new information.

The club was given only one hour on the Gemini telescope, leading to comments about the "amateur hour."

But there was nothing amateurish about the techniques used. RY Tau in the middle of the gas field is so bright that it threatened to wash out details of the gas structure. Telescope operators had to take four short exposures and then "stack" the data to produce the final image.

Each of the exposures was made with a different filter to bring out specific color features. Those colors give varied information about the processes going on.

The Canadian contest also provided an hour's time on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea. That prize was won by the Big Sky Astronomical Society of Vulcan, Alberta.

Using the wide-angle capability of the CFHT instrument, they produced an unusual image of the Pleiades, which is being used as a poster to popularize astronomy in Canada.