Re: HD209458 Transit opportunities for the Mark IV

[Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com>]

I have worked out how to make the Mark IV track longer.  It is a relatively 
simple change.  I will have to have a couple of parts made.  I should be 
able to get at least 6 hours tracking and possibly 7 or 8 with the new 
design.  There may be the best opportunity to track from a single location 
due to weather.  But it will be fun to try to pass observations across the 
country.  With 6 or so locations we should have a good chance.

Tom Droege

At 09:13 AM 8/3/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Mike commented on transits with MIKE.  The eclipses are 3hrs long,
>and you can go roughly 1.5hrs east or west of the meridian with
>the Mark IV.
>   I assume your degree-form of hour angle at least keeps the same
>convention of east being negative.  Hour angle is a defined quantity
>and needs to be in hours to avoid confusion.
>   Since you are about 2hrs east of me, you could follow an eclipse
>as far west as you can and I can pick it up as far east as I can,
>thereby making a continuous ~4-5hr observation.  If you can find
>just the right eclipse and guarantee clear weather at both sites
>(yeah, right), I am certainly willing to add ARNE into the frey.
>   Note that the eclipse depth is about 0.02mag.  This is easy with
>the Mark IV in that single observations have about this error.  Once
>you average a few points, you can easily see such a drop.
>Arne