Re: Rochester Mark IV news

[aah@nofs.navy.mil]

Michael K. wrote:
>I guess the core of my question is: are you guys planning on coordinating 
>activities or is each installation doing its own observing program?
  Every person for themselves! :-)
  Seriously, everyone with a Mark IV has their own idea of what
science is best.  I am perfectly willing to do a coordinated campaign
on some particular star if there is a good reason to do so.  I've done
several such campaigns, and they are actually quite difficult to set up.
Since the Mark IV only has ~2.5hr coverage, sites have to be fairly
close together to have overlap, and then weather/other problems come
into play.  If the mounts were capable of larger motion, then you could
have some redundancy, which is how most coordinated campaigns survive.
  Something like HD209458 works since only two sites have to coordinate,
and the eclipses repeat with fair frequency so if you miss it tonight,
there will be another chance.  When you want to observe 24hrs straight
to remove aliasing on multiperiodic stars for example, or catch an
occultation, you can't afford to miss much of the time series.
Arne