SARA-CT Report Archive

Date	Name	Affiliation	Other Observers	Instrument	Hours Observed	Hours Lost	Reason	Observing Program
05/17/2025	Tom Rutherford	ETSU	None	CCD	0	11	Clouds	Cloudy-- never opened.
05/14/2025	Tom Rutherford	ETSU	None	CCD	0	11	Clouds	Clouds-- never opened.
05/13/2025	Tom Rutherford	ETSU	None	CCD	0	11	Clouds	Clouds-- never opened.
05/12/2025	Tom Rutherford	ETSU	None	CCD	6	4	Clouds	Exoplanet. No issues, but clouds came in just after midnight. Pointing still very good.
05/10/2025	Tom Rutherford	ETSU	None	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Exoplanets. An excellent night. Target was almost dead center so the pointing issue seems to have been resolved.
05/03/2025	Billy Quarles	ETAMU	None	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	TESS EBs, clear skies, good night
05/02/2025	Todd Hillwig	Valparaiso University	None	CCD	8	0	No problems to report	Pointing was good. Some high thin clouds, but all else went well.
05/01/2025	Michael Fauerbach	FGCU	NA	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Asteroid photometry. Time on camera computer within 1sec of actual time. Pointing was good.
04/28/2025	Todd Hillwig	Valparaiso University	None	CCD	8	0	Other	Telescope pointed about 12 arcminutes East of target. Computer time was correct (to within a second or so, as far as I could tell), so not sure what the cause was.
04/27/2025	Robert Berrington	Ball State University	none	Andor	10	0	Equipment Failure	Everything worked correctly except that the pointing of the telescope was consistently off by 950 seconds. To place the object in the center of the field required an offset applied of 950 seconds. This offset meant that the object was not within the camera field of view when the telescope was pointed to the object. The telescope control computer's clack was checked to see if it was off, but it was found to ahead of the time servers by approximately 5 seconds (4.7 seconds).
04/26/2025	Martha A. Leake	Valdosta State University	none	Andor	12	1	Software/Control PC Issues	Software limit to western sky reached by previous observer. I was able to combine tips from Tom R. and Todd H. and the manual to use the softpad to back out of the HA = 05 22 55.2 position, using the finer motions, watching the horizon map in the manual, and reaching a point (at Dec of -32 degrees) that the program allowed me to go to Zenith Park and proceed with observing. Took darks and biases, morning flats, images, and started transfer of data. Next biggest issue was pointing; it seemed like I was off an entire frame. Bill's suggestion considered. No asteroid photometry this night, but did get some observations to complement classes. Weather excellent. Reached sub arc second FWHM twice. Needed to finish up by 7:15 am, and did, although report filed at 1 pm. All disconnected at present. Zenith pa
04/25/2025	Mariel Lares Martiz	Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University	none	0.6	9	0	Software/Control PC Issues	When attempting to park the telescope at zenith to take twilight flats, the system displayed a "Reached software W limit" error. This prevented the telescope from moving further or completing the park to the zenith position. Additionally, it did not allow me to move the telescope manually or park it at coordinates (00:00:00, +15:00:00) or stow it. The issue could not be resolved during the session.
04/22/2025	Ken Watanabe	FGCU	Jacob Kinney, Max Smuda	Andor	4	0	No problems to report	AGN target 3C 279. No issues. Dome closed and parked at requested position
04/21/2025	Kurtis Williams	ETAMU	none	Andor	12	0.5	Software/Control PC Issues	white dwarf time series. Weather was good. Only technical problem was needing to abort a series due to accidentally setting the binning to 1x2. The standard recovery didn't work, so had to try the auxiliary instructions. That worked but was slow due to lag. Accidentally closed ACE while shutting down for the night. Clocks were exact on Camera computer and 1.0 s fast on telescope computer. Pointing off by 9 arcmin west. Lots of lag on camera computer.
04/20/2025	Matt Wood	ETAMU	NA	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	CV Time Series. Bill's offset (RA,DEC) = (+750,30) still good. SARACAM/SARATEL clocks were wrong by +00:01:31 and -00:00:11 respectively. Synced TEL and eventually got CAM set correctly manually. Peter will look at this later today (via Discord communication).