Logbook Icon Walter's LogBook
March 2004

Overview

The big developments this month were the beta versions of ECU Pro 4 which now supports the USNO A2 catalogue and ASCOM drivers. I downloaded the 6.5GB A2 catalogue (also supported by PinPoint) over 5 mornings.

The SXV-H9 is the imaging camera, with exposures for variable stars of 120 seconds at 4x4 binning (unguided). This month's session notes are below the overview section.

Monthly Statistics, March 2004
Night Imaging
Time (s)		 Exposure
Time (s)		 #
Targets		 #
Exposures		 Variable Star
Outbursts/Activity
3/9/04 24845 21000 19 175
3/10/04 32410 26400 23 220
3/13/04 33634 27840 24 232
3/19/04 15619 11400 16 95 ER UMa UV Gem
3/21/04 29511 24000 23 200 ER UMa QW Ser
3/22/04 8668 6240 12 52 ER UMa
3/23/04 34428 27720 35 231 ER UMa
3/27/04 19355 16020 17 134 V1008 Her
3/28/04 33038 27990 27 234 V1008 Her
3/29/04 32973 26790 27 224 V1008 Her
10 nights 264481
(73.47 hr)		 215400
(59.83 hr)		 223 1797 Activity in 4 stars.

Temperature Chart

Session Notes

Tue/Wed, March 9/10, 2004

Session from 21:45 to 05:20. Thin cloud cleared out in the evening, leaving most of the night available to image variables with the moon out. ACP ran things from midnight onwards, and it stopped imaging and parked the scope at the end of astronomical twilight. Now I just have to get it to turn off power to the camera and scope...

Wed/Thu, March 10/11, 2004

Session from 18:30 to 05:18. I rebooted the XP machine this afternoon and forgot to restart DDW, so the dome closed itself. Bob Anderson dropped by for a tour in the evening.

Sat/Sun, March 13/14, 2004

Session from 18:30 to 05:15. I started testing a new beta of ECU Pro v4 tonight. I've also started downloading the 6GB USNO A2 star catalogue to use with PinPoint (ECU Pro 4 will use it too!).

Fri/Sat, March 19/20, 2004

Session from 18:30 to 23:50 (clouded over). I had ECU (now with ASCOM support!) connected to the ACP telescope hub and it worked great! All my software (ECU/DTU/MaxIm/FocusMax/ACP/PinPoint) plays together!
Last night was clear in the evening, but I was late starting and by the time I finished doing dark frames it had clouded over.

Sun/Mon, March 21/22, 2004

Session from 20:20 to 05:10. The clouds cleared away in the early evening, and there was a moderate NW wind. I used a new version of DDW sent to me by Steve Chambers and it works great (allows manipulation of user pins via script).

Mon/Tue, March 22/23, 2004

Session from 18:45 to 22:00. The transparency got really bad near the end and the Clear Sky Clock said the sky was due to cloud over in a couple of hours anyway, so I stopped for the night.

Tue/Wed, March 23/24, 2004

Session from 18:30 to 05:10. Session from 18:30 to 05:10. ACP ran the show (as usual) from 22:30 to dawn. I forgot to turn the pointing corrector back on, but as it turns out the pointing is actually better with it off. The scope only missed one star out of 34, and cut a swath through Lyra/Hercules before the dawn time limit hit.
Two asteroids were captured in the RZ Leo field (30 x 120s). The image and a map are shown below.
RZ Leo & Two Asteroids
RZ Leo field image
Scope: 10" f/6.3 LX200, camera: SXV-H916 binned 4x4.
Put your mouse cursor over the image to see a map. Asteroid data is found in the table below.
Asteroid 58264 (magnitude 21.2) is not visible in the image.

Asteroid 1229 Tilia 14714 2000CQ6
Magnitude 16.4 17.0
Earth distance (AU/million km) 2.752 (411.7) 1.481 (221.6)
Solar distance (AU/million km) 3.739 (559.3) 2.470 (369.5)
Solar elongation 170.2 170.3
Phase angle 2.6 3.9

Sat/Sun, March 27/28, 2004

Session from 23:30 to 06:00. ACP ran the show (as usual) from 00:30 to 06:00.

Sun/Mon, March 28/29, 2004

Session from 20:00 to 06:00. ACP ran the show from 23:15 to 06:00.

Mon/Tue, March 29/30, 2004

Session from 19:45 to 06:00. ACP ran the show from 23:10 to 06:00. It was warm in the attic and I surprised a bat when I opened the door to go "out" to the observatory.