Status Report from Cincinnati

["Gutzwiller, Michael" <mgutzwiller@lanvision.com>]

August was an important month here in Cincinnati.  On the weekend of Aug 3-5
I visited Tom and acquired MIKE.  Tom was able to familiarize me with MIKE
and the current software on Friday night which was mostly clear.  On
Saturday we tore MIKE down and loaded up my minivan with all the parts and
accessories.  Sunday my wife and I drove back to Cincinnati and unloaded all
the parts.

During the next week or so I was able to reassemble MIKE in my basement and
communicated successfully with it.  All the motors worked properly after
some of the connectors were rearranged and MIKE seems to be fine.  I wasn't
able to see any stars from the basement ;) but I did create darks, etc. that
seemed reasonable with the expected range of values.

Now that I had MIKE assembled I was able to take enough measurements to
create a design for an enclosure.  What I came up with was a 4 foot wide, 4
foot deep, and 6 foot tall enclosure with a split sliding roof.  (This is
where a picture is worth a thousand words.  The pictures will go up on the
site as soon as possible!)  MIKE will sit on a platform at the 3 foot level
and the controlling computer will sit at the 1 1/2 foot level.  The roof is
in two parts which open in the middle and slide 20 inches in either
direction.  This should allow either camera to see any point in the sky
within 45 degrees of the meridian and at my latitude from about -20 degrees
to +90 degrees in declination.  (Actually there is a tree that limits it a
little more but the enclosure won't interfere.)  That should give me enough
to look at for a while!

The enclosure is now complete except for some trim work and staining and I
hope to move MIKE out into the enclosure this week.  I will let everyone
know when that happens and when I get some pictures to the web site.

My goal for September is to have MIKE operational in time for the transits
of HD209458 that start on Sept 22.


Mike G.