AAVSOnet news 2013-03-26

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Tue, 03/26/2013 - 12:36

W30 is now fully operational.  Bill Goff has it running nicely; he is doing some tweaks on the mount, but many programs are underway.  We are implementing an rsync process to transfer the images from California to HQ in a more efficient manner.

OC61 at Mt. John University Observatory (NZ) is now fully operational.  We are running some test projects, but have inquiries in with the University of Canterbury to get their researchers involved, and are accepting AAVSO projects for this nice southern telescope.  The seeing over the past few weeks ranges from about 1.1 arcsec to 2.0arcsec, acceptable.

BSM_NM has been installed at Bill Stein's observatory near Cloudcroft, with the help of Tom Smith.  The remaining issues before commissioning can take place are to get internet properly installed and configured, and to polar-align the telescope.

BSM_Berry is operational on the HQ roof.  Gary Walker has built a nice automated enclosure for it that will be installed in a couple of weeks.  After that, this system will be used on every clear night in the Boston area.

John Briggs has been working on the echelle spectrograph that will go on the Morgan telescope.  While we are waiting for that telescope to be completed, the spectrograph will be used at David Mittelman's observatory in Colorado, with time being made available to the membership.

Work continues on the Schiaparelli Observatory (Italy), where Mario Motta's 80cm mirror resides.  They have the mirror cell completed, and are waiting for the new Cassegrain secondary.  They hope to have first light with this telescope in the summer; the AAVSO will get a fraction of the time on this telescope for spectroscopy.

Arne