Re: Newbie: observation request?

[Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com>]

Well, I just missed it.  My last frame went to 15h 26m.  Then I turned off 
and went to bed.  Aaron said that there was just a couple of hours to view 
it past dark.  I forgot that we are at least an hour west.  So I turned off 
around midnight as I was tired.

These are actually the very first images from MIKE.  Not bad, considering 
it is a brand new machine and I spent all day yesterday taking the cameras 
apart and fixing various things.  I got one CD full of images.  This will 
be good for Mike to frame and hang on the wall.

The system is not lined up properly.  Remember it is set up for Cincinnati, 
so the polar axis is off.  Also I just line the cart up to the porch 
railing, so it is not lined up E-W either.  The short exposure helps, but 
the stars are oval.  I think the focus looks better than on TOM.

I set the stop to point as far west as I could and just ran in the mode 
where it tracks the sky and cogs back and takes another frame.  This 
sitting on 38 N with a 60 second exposure.  I actually guessed pretty good 
on the RA, as I am only 11 min off.  I will try to set this right tonight, 
and put in the Decl. so the WCS coordinates will be right.

This seems to me to be as good as anything to debug MIKE.  So I will just 
sit here and see what I can get for Aaron.

Tom Droege

At 08:22 PM 6/8/01 -0400, you wrote:

>  Hi, I'm new to TASS and trying to get up to speed. I've spent much time
>at the web site over the past few weeks and have read the last 4 months in
>the archive of this group. I hope I'm not bothering anyone with this
>request.
>  I'm looking for observations of RR CrB, a red semiregular with some very
>short pulsation periods. The main period is around 60 days, but Hipparcos
>detected 2 shorter periods. One is 4 days with a .13mag amplitude and the
>other is 8 days with .08mag amplitude. A call was issued by some
>astronomers a year or two ago for photometry on one of these objects to
>try and determine the cause of this microvariability (it is believed these
>short periods are overtones).
>  I cannot perform observations of this object because of limitations in my
>field of view where I live. I tried phasing together 14 days of
>observations spread out but that isn't enough. What I really need is 4-5
>days of continuous coverage. I don't believe the new data set covers this
>object, but maybe someone with a working TASS camera and some spare time
>(hah) could help out?
>  The object is around mag 8 located at 15h 41m 26.1s and +38:33:28. I can
>provide much more info to anyone interested, including a paper I wrote on
>this object for a class. I would like to publish the results of this data
>in a professional journal and have lined up a couple of professionals to
>advise me on the analysis and math. Anyone who can help will, of course,
>be listed as a co-author.
>  Thanks and I hope this wasn't off topic for the list.
>
>Aaron