SARA-KP Report Archive

Date	Name	Affiliation	Other Observers	Instrument	Hours Observed	Hours Lost	Reason	Observing Program
10/20/2024	Gary Henson	ETSU	Rutherford	Spectrograph & CCD	8	0	No problems to report	Comet and Massive Star Spectra, M31 H-alpha nova monitoring. Spectra guiding worked very well, did have brief instance of ACE program losing communication with control card (a bit worrisome, it's getting OLD)
10/18/2024	Gary D Henson	ETSU	Rutherford	Spectrograph & CCD	7.5	0	No problems to report	Spectra of Comet Atlas, Massive Binary, M31 Nova monitoring
10/13/2024	Michael Fauerbach	FGCU	NA	CCD	7	1	Clouds	asteroid photometry. Full Moon and high clouds were not ideal, but no technical issues to report.
10/11/2024	Tom Rutherford	ETSU	None	CCD	0	11	Connection Issues	Connected during the day to get flats, etc. CCD computer dropped off-line and could not connect to it or the observatory computer after that. No issues connecting to the telescope computer though-- it worked fine except that the CCD would not open through it either.
10/09/2024	Aarran Shaw	Butler	None	Leach Camera	0	All	Software/Control PC Issues
10/09/2024	Matt Wood	A&M Commerce	None	CCD	3	9	Clouds	Clouds at beginning of night. In middle of night Camera computer rebooted itself with Virus Install as best as I can tell. This terminated the data collection. I couldn't find the restart instructions on either computer desktop. I restarted ACE on SARATEL, but when I tried to start the camera it had a failure mode. It's late enough in the night that I decided to give up.
10/08/2024	Matt Wood	A&M Commerce	None	CCD	12	0	No problems to report	Time series photometry of cataclysmic variables. Had a difficult time with getting a good focus. Ended at 338400 later in night through IR Block filter.
10/06/2024	Tom Rutherford	ETSU	None	CCD	11	0	No problems to report	M31, Exoplanet. No problems.
10/02/2024	William Keel	University of Alabama	4 cats	ARC CCD	10	0	No problems to report	AGN extended clouds. Focus 333000, guider focus 4000. Guide camera did some weirdness at the start of the night (multiple images, not cooling) but settled down and ran fine for ~6 hours (2 disconnections - if you catch it right away and reconnect, guiding can resume). Peter connected, changed Windows settings in device manager to not power down USB ports to save power.
10/01/2024	Ken Rumstay	VSU (Emeritus)	None	CCD camera	0	12	Clouds	I was unable to observe; I offered the night to anyone who could use it, but had no takers. That turns out to have been a moot point; apparently domes on the mountain were closed all night due to "threatening clouds".
09/30/2024	William Keel	University of Alabama	2 cats	ARC CCD	8.5	1.5	Software/Control PC Issues	AGN extended ionized clouds. Focus 333500, guider focus 4000. Tonight featured an epic duel with the autoguider. Long email is being sent to Gary and Peter with details. Guider settings with ARC camera; X rate +1, Y rate +1, angle=0.
09/28/2024	Ken Rumstay	VSU (Emeritus)	None	CCD camera	10.5	0	No problems to report	AGN variability. Good night, though seeing was not the best. The telescope systematically points slightly east of target after slewing. Also, on a few occasions an exposure would self-abort soon after starting. Was able to restart each time.