December Report - and a review of the year.

[Tom Droege <tdroege2@earthlink.net>]

Status Report for December, 2002 - and the year.

TOM1 was run scanning a 24 degree wide strip of sky.  In spite of it being 
December, we collected 47 disks of data.  Just about enough to find a few 
longer period variables.

By setting the exposure length to 90 seconds, we can just take 6 frames of 
sky in the 16 minutes that it takes for 4 degrees of sky to pass.  At the 
equator, one Mark IV can thus take a 24 degree strip of sky.  With three 
Mark IVs running, I should be able to get everything that goes over from -6 
to +80 or so.  It depends on the strategy at high latitudes.  So that it my 
plan.  I will spend the next month or so fussing with things like flocked 
paper and field corrections, then start "final" data taking with TOM1, 
TOM2, and TOM3.

Meanwhile I plan to build 3 Mark Vs.  These will have 4 cameras each, and 
either do BVRI or VI, VI with 4x8 degree coverage.  These will be run on 
selected fields following them for 6 hours or so to look for short period 
variables.

Looking back, we started the year taking the first "good" data.  One look 
at the Christmas present sent me by Michael Richmond (his pipeline set up 
for a novice unix programmer) sent me off to take a unix class.  This 
worked, and now I can do simple unix things.  At the beginning of the year 
I was starting to assemble ROB.  ROB moved to Colorado in August.

In February we filed papers that make TASS an official US Government non 
profit research organization.  Don't send money yet.  I am patiently 
waiting to see if they will audit me.  Even though I think I have a 
legitimate non profit operation, it will not be worth the effort if I have 
to spend all my time arguing with the IRS.

The event of the year was the discovery of the memory board reset problem 
in May.  The memory system has worked without problem since then.  It pays 
to never give up on a problem.  We started running the chiller under a 
relative humidity control which solved all the condensation problems.  We 
started up TOM2 in June and TOM3 in September.  Michael Richmond wondered 
where the return air was for the dry air system so (with a somewhat red 
face for not thinking of it) we added a closed loop dry air system which 
solves the ice crystal problem on the CCD with a much lower use of desiccant.

In September we started the design of the Mark V.  Someone named Winchester 
told me that I will live as long as I keep designing new camera 
systems.  Those familiar with the Winchester house will note the 
similarities to a Mark IV system.

In July we started putting up monthly star measurement lists.  This allowed 
a few observers to go out and take more detailed data on discoveries.  This 
produced a couple of IBVS papers.

Michael Sallman now has the year's data from TOM1 on line.

As we close the year, we are worrying over how to take better flat fields.

Tom Droege