SARA-CT Report Archive

Date	Name	Affiliation	Other Observers	Instrument	Hours Observed	Hours Lost	Reason	Observing Program
02/24/2026	Billy Quarles	ETAMU	None	CCD	7	0	No problems to report	TESS EBs. Clear with 60% humidity. Found focus at 127000.
02/22/2026	Ava Webber	Clemson University	Dieter Hartmann	Andor CCD griz	9	0	No problems to report	Clemson blazar study
02/21/2026	Robert Berrington	Ball State University	none	arc	7	0	Connection Issues	The night was good and no problem with the telescope that prevented observing. The only issue is the guide camera still has connection issues. This could be either because I do not know how to fix them, or the camera is down. Starting at about 10:30 PM ET (12:30 PM locally) the Radmin3 connection through the Cisco VPN slowed significantly. The remainder of the night meant several login after a dropped connect to one or both of the computers. OF the two computers (telescope control or camera control) the telescope control was considerably more stable than the camera computer that would not stay connected for more that about 20 minutes. While this was a pain, it did not interfere with normal telescope operations.
02/20/2026	William Keel	University of Alabama	2 cats	Andor CCD	10	2	Clouds	AGN. Focus 128200.
02/19/2026	Alba Rico	Clemson University	Dieter Hartmann	CT Telescope	null	0	No problems to report	Clemson Blazar study
02/17/2026	Hodari James	ASC	Students	ARC Camera	5	0	No problems to report	Observing for Astronomy Lab with students
02/16/2026	Aarran Shaw	Butler U	N/A	CCD	7	0	No problems to report	CV candidates, Observed one object for most of night. Found best focus at 129000.
02/14/2026	Steven Savery	University of Delaware	Ben	CCD	4	0	No problems to report	For 2/13- Observed the galaxy PKS 0405-123 while above 30 degrees using Bessel U, B, V, R, and I filters. Gathered about 50 images per filter. Didn't have a second target for the night, so closed up at midnight CT time
02/12/2026	James Webb	FIU	Observational astronomy Class	1-meter	0	10	Connection Issues	Blazars and pretty pictures. Unable to get the VPN tunnel working. Will have a computer tech look at it tomorrow and see if we can get it fixed. I have new computers running windows 11 recently installed.
02/10/2026	Robert Berrington	Ball State University	none	arc	4.5	3.5	Clouds	Short period variable star program. Clouds started to roll in at the latter half of the night. Guide camera is still non-functional, and I did not investigate to see if I could restart the camera.
02/09/2026	Ken Watanabe	Florida Gulf Coast University	Jonathan Zielinski	CCD	8	0	No problems to report	All went really well. Dome home and closed. telescope parked and mirror cover closed.
02/08/2026	Robert Berrington	Ball State University	none	arc	7	0	Equipment Failure	Short period variable star program. No issues were seen over the course of the night that prevented observing. The guide camera is still non-functional. I did not try to investigate rebooting the guide camera (QSI?). But it would be very nice to have a functioning guide camera. Connection at the beginning of the night to the telescope control camera was very slow. It improved later in the night.
02/06/2026	Zach Savery	University of Delaware	Kaylee and Millie	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Gathered V band photometry of ZTF J0328-1219 and WD 1150-153. Astrophotography imaging of the Rosette Nebula and a NGC galaxy was also gathered during the night.
02/05/2026	Zach Savery	University of Delaware	None	CCD	0	8	Clouds	Plan was to preform optical photometry of ZTF J0328-1219 while above 30 degrees at the beginning of the night. Clouds were above 30 percent until at least 4 am local, so put the night down as lost.
02/04/2026	Billy Quarles	ETAMU	none	CCD	6	4	Humidity	TESS EBs. Night started clear with 70% humidity. Humidity dropped to 60% after a an hour (~1am UTC) but started rising again. Reached 80% by 5am UTC.