|
Walter's LogBook |
| July 2006 |
Overview
I imaged a bunch of under-observed Mira stars in the summer Milky Way. These stars have rather poor AAVSO charts (which is why they are under-observed!) with poor magnitude sequences. There was lots of clear sky this month, though the nights are short at this time of year. It was nice to do some more visual observing again too.
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, July 2006 Night Imaging
Time (s)Exposure
Time (s)#
Targets#
ExposuresT (C) /\T 07/02/06 19088 16800 39 140 21.6 -3.0 07/06/06 19452 17040 39 142 20.3 -3.2 07/07/06 19976 17400 41 145 22.6 -4.0 07/08/06 19865 17280 39 144 23.5 -4.7 07/13/06 20692 18000 42 150 21.6 -1.2 07/14/06 20055 17520 39 146 26.2 -3.4 07/16/06 20135 17640 48 147 26.2 -3.7 07/19/06 6573 5760 12 48 24.2 -5.3 07/20/06 21800 19320 43 161 25.0 -4.1 07/29/06 22754 18120 36 151 25.1 -2.3 07/31/06 13202 4080 6 34 23.7 -0.5 11 nights 203592
(56.55 hr)168960
(46.93 hr)384 1418
Session Notes
Mon/Tue, July 18/19
ACP hit an error and stopped running unbeknownst to me. Turns out I had blank coordinates for XY Aql in my variable star lookup module. When I got up in the morning the scope was pointing to the NW at altitude -19 degrees! Fortunately the scope was OK (no tangled cables or anything) and I shut everything down. So that little error cost me most of a night! I fixed the error (missing coords) and added a couple of lines of code to catch that kind of error in case it ever happens again!
Mon/Tue, July 18/19
Nights are getting longer now -- can image from 22:03 to 04:12 so we're back up over 6 hours now (twilight times getting shorter). I re-ran my plan with the Sge/Aql Miras which also has a block of CV's at the beginning and end. Everything ran fine all night tonight.
This is the second night in a row with fantastic transparency (sky was blue almost to the sun today!). I had a nice session with the 17.5" (2315 - 0100) in the back yard and re-observed some nice deep sky objects: M13, NGC6207, M71, M27, M57, NGC6781, NGC6760, M15. I was going to start off by observing Pluto (it is only 20' from xi Ser) but unfortunately it was too low to see over the coachhouse roof. Also observed some variable stars: T CrB, W Her, T Del, R Equ, X Peg.