Taking Data

[Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com>]

I now have several sets of data like Data Set 19.  The last two days were 
really humid.  The result was that the V window is fogged.  One can still 
see the stars, but the fogging roughly doubles the noise level.  The window 
heater is running, it is just not good enough.

I am slowly getting the telescope aligned in RA rate and mount 
rotation.  The last run drifted by 0.002 pixel per second from RA rate and 
0.01 pixel per second from mount rotation.  This is close enough that most 
of the stars appear on all the frames of a run

I am able to take 56 frames in a sequence with 100 second exposure.  There 
is about 156 seconds between exposures.  Last night I was able to get a 
flat field run and three 56 exposure runs of different fields.  Thus each 
run is about 2.4hours.  I could do about 3.4 hours if it were not for the 
camera looking at the roof.

I will try a few more days to get a better run for DS-19 then I will send 
it out.

Tom Droege