SARA-RM Report Archive

Date	Name	Affiliation	Other Observers	Instrument	Hrs Observed	Hrs Lost	Reason	Observing Program
05/09/2026	TODD R VACCARO	Ball State University	n/a	Andor	6	8	Clouds	Eclipsing binary. High clouds increasing all night till it was too much, so closed. Only issue was that the dome was linked and tele Z parked when I logged on and it wasn't looking through the slit, so I parked scope and drove back to Z and it lined up for flats. I verified dome was closed with the camera and turned shutter power off. I couldn't see the dome at night, so I had to wait till enough Sun was up to see the dome. I tried the night light but that apparently isn't enough to see the interior of the dome at night.
05/06/2026	Roi Alonso	IAC	none	CCD	7.5	0.5	Equipment Failure	WD observations. Track loss @45,40alt,az.
05/05/2026	Todd Vaccaro	Ball State University	n/a	Andor	3	6	Humidity	EB. Managed to get a primary eclipse in the 3 hours salvaged from not being able to open on time b/c the dome lights were on and we had no way to turn those white vertical strip lights off. After telling R. Berrington and he Peter, it was thought someone had been in there and forgot to turn off. A couple hours later I noticed the lights off, but other, lower lights still on and people were moving around inside. The rest of the lights were finally turned off and I was able to open about 3 hours late. I also had to close a couple hours early for high humidity and fog rolled in around dawn, so I got no BVR flats. It was not clear if people were working on something in the dome as I did see a couple move a cart or something in the lighted doorway and we had no information of contact with the mountain to turn off lights. At 3am UT when humidity got high, I made sure that the dome was closed along with the mirror cover and that the shutter power was turned off. I parked the telescope and dome (after unlinking) around dawn when I saw that I wasn't getting flats. I posted some of these incidents on Discord as they were happening and asked for calibrated, single-binned BVR flats from others.
05/04/2026	Tom Rutherford	ETSU	None	CCD	0	8	Humidity	High humidity all night so did not open.
05/03/2026	Tom Rutherford	ETSU	None	CCD	0	8	Humidity	Clouds at first, then cleared but humidity went up so did not open.
04/30/2026	Tom Rutherford	ETSU	None	CCD	6	2	Clouds	The telescope did not want to go to a new target, but a recycle took care of that and all was fine the rest of the night. Scope parked and dome shutter power turned off. Variable star, exoplanet.
03/25/2026	Van Hamme	FIU	Samec	CCD	0	10	Humidity	No Obs. Rain or high humidity.
04/27/2026	Roi Alonso	IAC	none	ccd	7	1	Other	WD photometry. Tracking issues at end of night, at the typical NW direction, about 50 degs elevation.
04/27/2026	Steve Gillam	ERAU	None	Andor Camera	7	2	Equipment Failure	Microvariables. Hit the west safety limit at HA=3hr04min, about 36 mins sooner than expected. Note: Three nights ago, I hit the west lint, tracking the same star, at 3hr 40 mins. I cycled the ACE cabinet power both times (between stopping and restarting the node services) to reset the limit switch and returned the scope to the zenith.
04/26/2026	Robert Berrington	Ball State university	none	arc	0	10	Humidity	High humidity prevented opening for the evening.
04/24/2026	Steve Gillam	ERAU	None	Andor camera	5	5	Humidity	Microvariables. The run ended about an hour before sunrise at the 3.5 hours west limit.
04/22/2026	Zach Savery	University of Delaware	Kaylee, Mille, Ben, Evelyn, and Caitlyn	CCD	5	5	Software/Control PC Issues