SARA-RM Report Archive

Date	Name	Affiliation	Other Observers	Instrument	Hrs Observed	Hrs Lost	Reason	Observing Program
03/08/2025	Tom Rutherford	ETSU	None	CCD	0	2	Equipment Failure	When I first logged on, the dome was stuck on "closing." I clicked on the icon to to open the dome and it never reported that it was open (stayed stuck on "opening.") Tried taking a 10-second image to check things out and it looked like a bias-- I concluded that the dome was not, in fact, open, but was still closed. Recycled everything twice but it did not help so I logged out after an hour or so (although I did park the scope at azimuth 235).
03/07/2025	Kaylee Grace	University of Delaware/Mt. Cuba Astronomical Observatory	Millie Dill	Andor CCD	0	11	Equipment Failure	Combination of issues tonight - shortly after sunset the humidity on the island dropped rapidly and skies were clear, so about 2-3 hours after sunset when the humidity was safely below 70% or so I attempted opening the dome to use the rest of the night. The shutters of the dome refused to open, becoming stuck in an endless "dome is opening" message. I tried cycling the dome shutters, dome azimuth, and full ace restart as listed in the "Restart Notes" on the PC, but none of that seemed to help. Given that we were almost halfway through the night at that point I stopped there as that was the extent of my solutions. Unfortunately it seems the island is back up to 100% humidity now.
03/05/2025	Kaylee Grace	University of Delaware/Mt. Cuba Astronomical Observatory	Millie Dill, Easton Honaker, Tali Natan, Zach Savery	CCD	0	11	Humidity	Cloudy, humid, unable to open :(
03/04/2025	Kaylee Grace	University of Delaware/Mt. Cuba Astronomical Observatory	Millie Dill, Easton Honaker, Tali Natan, Zach Savery	CCD	0	11	Snow	Snowy and humid, so never opened. Did take some biases and darks over the course of the night to attempt to determine why darks often have lower average counts than biases.
03/03/2025	Isaiah Cox	Clemson University	Dieter Hartmann	CCD	0	11	Humidity	Rain/snow and humidity. Never opened.
03/02/2025	Billy Quarles	East Texas A&M University	None	CCD	0	12	Humidity	100% Humidity all night.
02/28/2025	William Keel	University of Alabama	no time for cats	Andor CCD	5.5	5.5	Humidity	AGN-ionized clouds. Focus 95600, guider focus 0. Drive stopped at 1h44m west - I did only targets to the east after that. Humidity spiked very quickly as an exposure was ending - closed as fast as I could then. ING weather showed rain half an hour later.
02/27/2025	Todd Vaccaro	Ball State University	n/a	Andor	2.5	7.5	Humidity	EB program and monitor ASASSN-24fw. Lost most of the night to humidity as fog rolled in, but I lost about an hour on the dome not following scope. I also logged on around 2pm EST to prepare and the dome light was on, dome was listed as AJAR, but it was parked at 235. I missed eve flats b/c of dome issues and could use someone's flats from recent nights in BVR... Ace also crashed on me a couple of times in the beginning on tele pc and I had to do a full reset. I made sure the dome was shut, parked at 235, and tele stowed at 0HA and 0DEC.
02/26/2025	William Keel	University of Alabama	2 cats	Andor CCD	10.5	0.5	Software/Control PC Issues	AGN-ionized clouds. Focus 97900; guider focus 0. QSI guide camera would hang at point of readout; had to cycle camera power and wait for Andor to cool back down. Then Andor would hang; restarted connector client and node server to fix. Dome parked at 235. Drive shut off at 209 W +47 near end of night.
02/25/2025	Yong Sheng	Clemson University	Dieter Hartmann	Andor CCD griz	11	0	Equipment Failure	The tracking failed twice tonight. I closed the dome and parked it 235 degrees at the end of the night.
02/23/2025	Ken Watanabe	FGCU	Jacob Kinney	RM	12	0	No problems to report	Dome closed and parked to 235
02/22/2025	Tom Rutherford	ETSU	None	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Exoplanet, variable stars. No problems, although I had to recycle the CCD computer at about midnight GMT. Parked the dome 235 azimuth.