SARA 

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

6

.5

Equipment Failure

Spectroscopy of Be stars. Guide camera quit displaying images so lost long exposure, it did this twice then worked ok for next couple hours. Also had to drive Focus to zero and reset to get reliable focus change response going again.

Xianming Han

Butler University

none

ccd

8

2

Equipment Failure

Both the telescope and CCD computers rebooted themselves sometimes during the day. In late afternoon, the Dome status was blank, and called ACE, and Peter determined that the Dome UPS was off. He went to Kitt Peak (originally planned for something else) and turned it back on. Then I noticed the CCD temperature was 19C. I turned it on, took 2 hours to cool down sufficiently for observations. But now the bias values were at around 0 initially. But later it returned to its normal values (just below 200), may be Peter reset some parameters.

Xianming Han

Butler University

Betuel Paz

ccd

9.45

0

No problems to report

star

Michael Fauerbach

FGCU

NA

CCD

9

0

No problems to report

asteroid photometry.

James Webb

Florida International University

Chrissy, Georgie and Sparkle cats

CCD

6

0

No problems to report

Blazar microvariability S5 0716+71 and 1044+71 for WEBT consortium

Michael Fauerbach

FGCU

NA

CCD

9.5

0

No problems to report

Asteroid Photometry. After slewing to a new object it always took a couple of exposure before the telescope started tracking properly.

William Keel

University of Alabama

2 impatient cats

ARC CCD

2

8

Equipment Failure

Focus 119500. Guider not working - after reconnecting the QSI camera to Maxim, it disconnects with error code 30006 every time an exposure or guiding start is done (Maxim does seem able to control the spectrograph camera). Tried cycling telescope outlets and restarting NS/CC/ACE, but no joy. Tracking quality is highly variable around the sky; hour-long exposures for narrowband are right out.

Kurtis Williams

ETAMU

None

ARC/Leach

5

5

Software/Control PC Issues

Nice night. At least 1 hr lost due to user error (assuming 120 30s exposures was 2 hours). Rest of time was combo of user and software. I set up on a new target and snoozed deeper than intended. After 5 min, software stopped telescope tracking. When I awoke 4 hrs later, I had 4 hrs of star trails. Suspecting feline involvement, I restarted tracking but noticed that every couple of minutes ACE was throwing a quick red error (too fast to read) and tracking would stop again; status window showed a blue box with a statement that flexure file had been successfully loaded. I moved to another part of the sky, came back, and the red box stopped flickering. Telescope tracked fine for rest of night. (Error occurred at HA=-2, Dec=-03, in case that is relevant).

Kurtis Williiams

ETAMU

none

ARC

10.5

0

No problems to report

Nice night. Time-series white dwarf photometry. Decent seeing.

Stephen Gillam

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

May, Timothy

ARC Camera

8

1

Clouds

Microvariables

Martha A. Leake

Valdosta State University

Particiapant Tiffany Ferguson

CCD

0

12

Connection Issues

Could not connect in our SARA office, or with Ken's computer or my own (mine doesn't have Radmin). None of the links for SARA KP connected, usual error message was "Error connecting to ..... TCP/IP error occurred or connection closed." Could refer to age of computer in SARA office, but Ken's computer had a similar response. I am headed home. Weather is still good, but Spacewatch All-Sky cam shows yellow clouds in front of stars. How is the dust situation measured at KP (like the NOT listing at RM)? I'm OK if another Board Member wishes to have the rest of this night.

Todd Vaccaro

Ball State University

n/a

ARC

9.5

.5

Equipment Failure

Binary stars. Starting things up always requires sending the telescope to Z for flats with several commands. Around 347am MST the Bessel BVR sequence that had been running all night stopped and it appeared that the filter wheel 1 was stuck flashing the MOVING notification and no images were being obtained, so I lost about half an hour of data until I initiated the wheel, stopped/started the sequence again, and got a new sequence going.