AAVSOnet news, 2014-10-16

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Thu, 10/16/2014 - 12:18

Sonoita has started up again, after the monsoonal shutdown.  John Gross had the Paramount refurbished, and has worked other aspects of the system.  The image quality has improved, with much better tracking than in recent months.

BSM NM started fine, but after a couple of nights, the ST8-XME camera failed.  Bill Stein shipped this camera back to SBIG for repair, and has provided a loaner ST10-XME camera for this system.  It has worked so well that I am going to do a camera swap after the Fall meeting, and send an AAVSO ST10-XME camera to Bill for installation.  This one is currently being tested on BSM HQ, and includes BVRI, griz, Halpha and a diffraction grating.  The original ST8-XME will be installed on BSM HQ when it returns from SBIG.

TMO61 is having startup issues; we don't think it is anything serious, but just the usual difficulties after being turned off for several months.  We'll be working on this pretty heavily next week.

All other telescope statuses are as described in the previous post.  I am in the process of creating a clean procedure for filling the observing queues, and that means that every queue is being inspected.  Those of you with observing programs should expect an email from me over the next few weeks, asking about how your program is going and whether you need additional images.

Arne