SARA 

Ted von Hippel

ERAU

Alondra Valentin-Torres

imaging

2

2

Equipment Failure

Camera was inoperable and rebooting it didn't help. I put out a request for help to SARA-Tech and heard back from Kurtis Williams (thanks!) with a suggestion to reboot the computers. Either he or an anonymous elf logged in and fixed the camera problem (though not by rebooting the computers), though I don't know what the solution was.

Zorayda Martinez

Texas A&M University-Commerce

Kurtis Williams

Andor

7

0

No problems to report

White dwarf photometry, focus: 129999

Kurtis Williams

TAMUC

none

Andor

9

0.5

Other

White dwarf time series photometry. T=15C, focus=129500 at start of night with sudden change of -1500 in late morning. Seeing was mediocre at start of night (2" across mountain) but improved to 1" after local midnight. Used guider, with generally very good results. Target was at Dec=-10; at HA=-1:30 the telescope moved south by about 1 arcmin over 5 minutes - this motion was too fast for the guider to compensate, and the ACE RA/Dec readout did not register any change in position. At RA=+2h, the reverse happened - telescope moved north by about 1' over 5 minutes without the positional readout changing - lost about 15 minutes each time futzing about, resetting guiding, etc.

Robert Berrington

Ball State University

none

Arc

11

0

No problems to report

short period variable stars.

Michael Fauerbach

Florida Gulf Coast University

NA

CCD

9

0

No problems to report

no problems to report

Núria Torres-Albà

Clemson University

Yong Sheng, Scott Joffre

SARA CT

8

0

No problems to report

Clemson University observations of high-z blazars

William Keel

University of Alabama

3 cats

Andor CCD #2

10

0

No problems to report

Galaxies in H-alpha, merging systems. Focus 127200, guide focus 8500.

Priya Gokul dass

Florida Institute of Technology

Fowler, Malign

CCD

8.5

3

No problems to report

TESS Follow Up of High Proper Motion Stars. I filter had weird brightness to it (like clouds but the sky was clear).

William Keel

University of Alabama

3 cats

Andor CCD #2

8.7

0

No problems to report

Galaxies in H-alpha, merging galaxies, 30 Dor. Focus 127500, guider focus 8500. At dec +10, had recurrence of problem where telescope bobs N-S faster than guider could keep up. Shortly afterward, far to SE, focus shifted within a couple of minutes by 1500 units.

Ted von Hippel

ERAU

none

imaging

0

0

No problems to report

Tried to give away this half night but there were no takers.

Kurtis Williams

TAMUC

none

Andor

4.5

1

Other

Time series photometry. Seeing was poor, 3+ arcsec despite clear skies, low wind, and good seeing reported from summit. Lost about 1 hour fiddling with focus and filters trying to see if the seeing was instrumental (it wasn't). Gave up as midnight CDT approached and I decided sleep would be more useful than the data I was collecting.

Ross Silver

Clemson University

Dieter Hartmann

CCD

8

0.5

Equipment Failure

Photometric redshift of blazars. Telescope stopped tracking for a little bit. Was able to reset and get it working again after losing about 30 minutes of observing time.

Michael Fauerbach

FGCU

NA

CCD

8

0

No problems to report

got night from Jim Webb, no problems to report

Todd Hillwig

Valparaiso University

None

Andor CCD

5

0

Other

Taught an evening lab, so lost the first half of the night. The guider stopped working properly about an hour in. The guide star was in the middle of the field, but showed very large x and y corrections, so would wander to the edge of the guide box and bounce around there. Not sure what was wrong. I didn't hit Calibrate, but that seems like it may be the most likely cause.

Michael Fauerbach

FGCU

NA

CCD

8

0

No problems to report

only minor issue was the second filter wheel seemed to not move to the expected position twice -looked like fingers getting into the images. Hit the Init Filter Wheel button, seemed to fix the issue