I am looking for between 4 and 12 keen and committed amateur
astronomers to take part in an exciting new astronomical project.

You do not need to own your own telescope to get involved although
some previous experience of practical astronomy would be an advantage.
You will be given remote Internet access to a Takahashi E250 with an
SBIG ST8XE CCD (1530x1020 pixels) on a Paramount robotic mount. This
high quality professional observatory equipment is located at high
altitude in the darkest part of New Mexico.

It is intended that the Daventry Nova Survey will take 60 second CCD
images of all parts of the sky close to the galactic plane. This
technique will comfortably reach magnitude 16 and since a nova will
increase in brightness by anything between 7 and 19 magnitudes stars
previously in the magnitude range 23 to 35 can come into range. There
are lots of potential targets around - quite literally billions.

My suspicion is that the percentage of novae in the range 12 to 16
that get reported is extremely close to zero yet the expected number
of such objects, based on a detailed literature search, appears to be
in the hundreds of thousands.

If you would like to be considered for the team please contact me with
brief details of your previous astronomical experience at