AAVSOnet news 2013-01-25

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Fri, 01/25/2013 - 21:18

SRO50 and BSM-South continue working reliably.  Here is an update on some other telescopes in the network!

BSM_CA - this Bright Star Monitor at Bob Stine's observatory in California is nearly ready to go.  John Gross is getting the autofocusing to work and setting up ACP/ACP Scheduler.  Bob is at his "Ranchito" about half time, with the next visit in a few days, so we are hoping to have this system taking survey data in early February.

BSM_Berry - this system is on top of HQ.  I just finished polar aligning the system, and have a small amount of cable rerouting to do.  The faint limit is fine for BSM targets, even in the heart of Boston! I expect it to be taking survey data in early February.

OC61 - the main hardware glitch that caused the telescope to run away has been identified.  The University of Canterbury instrument shop has made some improvements in preparation for the installation of the spectrograph.  These should be added to the system next week, with some shakedown time required.  Otherwise, it is ready to go and will be taking data within a few days.

TMO61 - the RA drive is not running as smoothly as Jon Holtzman would like, so he is making some adjustments.  I've ordered the final QSI-683wsg science camera.  The system has already taken several nights of automated data, so we expect it to be fully operational within days.

W30 - Bill Goff has this system up and running, with one night of automated operation completed.  As soon as the bad weather moves away from California, we will be updating the queues and putting it into full service.

W28, BSM_NM will be installed in a few months when the weather gets warmer.  I will be on vacation next week, which is why many of the systems are due to be finished the week after that.

Arne

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
BSM_Berry

Hi Mark,

BSM_Berry will be at HQ for 6-12 months.  I am using it for a number of tasks, including a determination of how well the HQ roof works for telescope mounts, the faint limit of the sky, and new hardware/software configurations of the basic BSM system to improve operations and decrease setup time.  Once I've run through these tasks, I expect to relocate BSM_Berry to a better location and replace it with some other telescope on HQ.  As the weather pattern here in the Northeastern U.S. is not correlated with the weather in the Southwestern U.S., BSM_Berry is a good backup system for ensuring a good cadence on the bright-star survey.

Arne

BSM_Berry

Hi Arne,

If possible sometime during the DSLR Manual Workshop I'd like to take a look at the BSM_Berry setup . Eventually I'd like to put together a similar rig for myself, and seeing how you have done it with BSM_Berry would be very instructive. Cheers,

Mark

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Dear Arne,

Have you some

Dear Arne,

Have you some news about my first proposal ?

Best regards,

Laurent

 

 

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
aavsonet proposals

Hi Laurent,

Proposals are now handled by the Telescope Allocation Committee (TAC).  With two main telescopes now operational (SRO50 and W30), the TAC should be processing any backlog of proposals.  I don't recall seeing yours being forwarded to me, so perhaps it is still under consideration.

Arne