IRiS: a professional telescope at the service of students

Sup’sciences is a group of around ten students of 11^th and 12^th level, chosen among volunteers in the Lycée Branly (Dreux, France). We talk about scientific projects and scientific research. This year we study the space with IRiS. We also went to the National Museum of Natural History and we invited the scientist we met there for a conference. It can help for our orientation because we deal with the scientific approach and we can see different jobs related to science.

IRiS (French acronym for Initiation to Astronomical Research for Students) is a semi-professional telescope built for students to perform astronomical observations. It is located in the Haute-Provence Observatory (OHP), near Saint-Michel-l'Observatoire in the Southern French Alps. The telescope is controlled at distance using a web page, which is very simple to use (a simple one-hour training for the teacher in charge of the class is sufficient). The individual pictures are taken using filters (near-infrared to ultraviolet).

We applied for a first project in scholar year 2021-2022. The idea was to make a celestial trip and discover nice objects in the deep sky. First of all, the students were invited to visit the historical astronomical observatory in Paris downtown, to discover ancient instruments and discuss with a famous astrophysicist, Françoise Combes. On January 3^rd, 2022, we made our first observation night. The telescope first was focused on the Orion constellation and, by trials and errors, we succeeded to make great images, particularly the Horsehead Nebula. We met a second time, on February 2^nd, 2022, but the wind cancelled the observation night before all observations. The students took advantage of this evening to analyze and combine the first session images, in order to make colored compositions.

For the scholar year 2022-2023, a new project was accepted by the IRiS team. We would like to focus now on planets. As IRiS allows only imaging deep sky objects, we will use it to observe exoplanets transits in front of their star by measuring its transitory luminosity diminution. Unfortunately, the telescope’s camera broke down just before our night and we have to wait. Meanwhile, we got in touch with a local astronomy association. Our first observation night, allotted to Moon and Solar System planets observation, was cancelled because of the bad weather, but another night is planned in January.