Re: Back to Work

[Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com>]

Arne suggests longer exposures.  That I can do.  I will negotiate when I 
get things set up.  TOM is presently in the West tower.  From it's position 
on the floor, I can just about see the equator.  If I point higher in 
Declination, it looks at the top of the door.  So there is only a small 
range that I can see from where it is presently located.

Later, I plan to put TOM2 in the dome.  After I cut down a dead tree I will 
have a pretty good view.  But I don't expect to get that set up until early 
next year.

I could move TOM to the dome, but I could then not resist the temptation to 
completely rebuild it.  It does not have a working Declination motor.  To 
fix the problem I need to take the frame completely apart.  So there is no 
easy move since anything I do calls for a complete rebuild.  The result 
would be a long period out of service.

My idea is to start taking real data and to start running it through a 
production pipeline.  RawToFits lets me produce .fts files that should 
allow any pipeline to run.  Not the best for time of exposure, but perhaps 
we can work out a way to make that a little better.

Tom Droege

At 01:29 PM 9/7/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Tom suggested 100second exposures on the equator,
>backtracking every 12mins or so to pick up the next
>field.  I agree you would get lots of Landolt standards,
>but two things come to mind.  First, the deeper the exposure,
>the better exposed the Landolt standards will be.  I'd