Re: Question from Roy Tucker, forwarded to TASS

[Tom Droege <droege@fnal.gov>]

Chris and all,

Tass has seen a nova.  I think 1996 Cas?  And the Mark II at that.  Someone
wrote me that I should look for it and I went back in some old data and
there it was.  No filter, no calibration, ... but there it was.  If I had
been running even as organized as we are now, it surely would have been
"discovered".  So we will find things.  
It would probably be worth while to run a bunch of Mark IIs.  With 30 degree
coverage to mag 10 or so it would be a good nova and who knows what else
finder.  Who knows how many are missed completely?  That is the thing about
this project.  No end of fun things to do.  But we will concentrate for the
moment on the Mark III data and then the Mark IVs.  We cannot do everything.  

But I think we are on a good path.  We are working on developing all the
software that is needed.  That is why isolated people like Roy get tired.
There is so much to do, and the project is usually too big for one.  By
working together we carry a project through to completion that would wipe
out any one of us.

Tom Droege  



At 02:12 PM 5/26/98 -0700, Chris wrote:

>I had thought that TASS may see some nova.  Most may be to dim but
>Mk IV may catch a few.
>
>
(snip)