|
Walter's LogBook |
| January 2005 |
Overview
As usual, January saw some brutally cold nights (with wind chills of -40C). Highlights this month were the BZ UMa outburst as well as the U Gem activity. I upgraded to MaxIm 4.07 and used the Astrometric Resynchronization feature for the first time -- it's great for time series variable star work! I joined CVNet this month.
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, January 2005 | ||||||||
| Night | Imaging Time (s) |
Exposure Time (s) |
# Targets |
# Exposures |
Variable Star Outbursts/Activity |
|||
| 01/14/05 | 17870 | 15600 | 19 | 130 | ||||
| 01/15/05 | 44882 | 39240 | 40 | 327 | DI UMa | PV Per | ||
| 01/17/05 | 44242 | 38640 | 39 | 322 | UV Gem | ER UMa | ||
| 01/18/05 | 16401 | 14640 | 16 | 122 | BZ UMa | |||
| 01/20/04 | 41995 | 38310 | 18 | 501 | ||||
| 01/21/05 | 33694 | 26640 | 31 | 222 | ||||
| 01/23/05 | 43222 | 37080 | 37 | 309 | MR Per | ER UMa | ||
| 01/24/05 | 9817 | 8160 | 13 | 68 | ||||
| 01/26/05 | 43585 | 36960 | 52 | 308 | LX And | FO Per | CY UMa | |
| 01/27/05 | 35643 | 30360 | 75 | 253 | ||||
| 01/28/05 | 42205 | 36840 | 43 | 307 | DI UMa | ES Dra | ER UMa | |
| 01/30/05 | 42098 | 37080 | 43 | 309 | FS And | |||
| 01/31/05 | 27268 | 24720 | 22 | 206 | PV Per | |||
| 13 nights | 442922 (123.03 hr) |
384270 (106.74 hr) |
448 | 3384 | Activity in 11 stars. | |||
 |
Session Notes
Fri/Sat January 14/15, 2005
It clouded over around 23:30, aborting the ACP run. I did a few test images of M5 and NGC5364 at dawn (sky had cleared again).
Sat/Sun January 15/16, 2005
It was clear all night, and ACP did a 12½ run!
Mon/Tue January 17/18, 2005
Another 12½ ACP run!
Tue/Wed January 18/19, 2005
Thickening cloud ended the run shortly after 23:00.
Thu/Fri January 20/21, 2005
The moon is getting close to full, so of course it's clear. I was in the AAVSO's Thursdays Online Chat Room this afternoon and evening. After doing my regular run as far as BZ UMa, I stopped it and removed the V filter from the camera. Then I imaged BZ UMa for 6 hours (as part of the AAVSO's BZ UMa 2005 Campaign) in MaxIm using the Sequence tab with the "Astrometric Resynchronization" option turned on and set for 15 minutes -- it works great. I took a couple of 2-hour naps, getting up to check on MaxIm (since it was my first use of the resynch feature). A graph of the BZ UMa data is shown below -- it was quite an active star tonight! (The dome pointing was slightly off on AF Cam, but worked flawlessly otherwise for the rest of the night.)
Fri/Sat January 21/22, 2005
I checked in on BZ UMa tonight and it's much fainter than it was last night. The seeing was really bad tonight but that could be due to the chimney plume being blown westwards (first time it's happened in over a year). The Clear Sky Clock showed clear skies until 4am tonight. My ACP sequence aborted just before 03:30 so I'd say the weather predicion was spot on! The last couple of days have had wind chill factors (at night) of -40C, but the equipment continues to slog through it OK. The dome motors are most noticeably affected -- they sound different and don't turn as fast.
Mon/Tue Jan/Feb 31/1, 2005
At 02:06 EST (about an hour after I went to bed) the P4 machine locked up solid and I lost 4 hours of imaging time. D'oh! Now I'm thinking I need a system for detecting a computer lockup...