Setting Up

[droege@snapmail.us]

I am getting tom1 set up to make runs with 200 second exposures.  Looks
like I will be able to get strings of 24 exposures.  This should add quite
a few stars to the tass catalog.

The tracking looks great, and I am getting round stars even at 200 second
exposure.

Rob's software is behaving well, and I am slowly finding where I have not
understood the design.  Last night I discovered that if you move an image
before Rob is finished working on it that you get a mess.

The RA drive motor tends to stall out early in the morning if the speed
ratio is set at 32.  I have bought a couple of new motors to try.  They
should (from their specs) work well at 64x.  This should speed up
everything. Another advantge of these motors is that they make 0.9 degree
steps which is half the step of the present motor.  They are also direct
drive and have no gear train. This should smooth out the RA drive.

If I run 5 Mark IV's at 200 second exposure then I should be able to cover
the whole sky with 2 hour tracking in about 2 years.  You all will like
how these measurements will look.  The measurements won't really be
better, but they will look a lot better.  Well, for the purpose of
detecting variables they will be a lot better.  A factor of 5 or so.

Tom Droege