Re: monitoring cameras

["Wm. Bruce Weaver PhD" <bw@mira.org>]

Hi Tom,

Nothing I read caused me any (undue) alarm. I'm mostly interested in the
CCD systems, cameras, and related parts such as computers and software to
make them go.  In particular, the two lumigen-coated detectors would be
useful for extending to B.

My plan is not to continue the all-sky survey but to put them to use in
measuring T Tauri variability. My current thought is to mount several
cameras on a stable, autoguided mount to camp on target regions.  Perhaps
simultaneous B, V, I on two or three regions simultaneously. I guess only
two in B. These regions are too extended for the MIRA 36-inch to cover in
any sensible fashion.

Late summer, fall, and early winter is the best observing here and the
time when the most of these regions are available. There are a couple
regions available in the early summer but they are interesting because
they are little studied.  Conditions here in late winter and early spring
are poor but those are not the optimum times for these regions.

Early work I did 20 years ago showed that variability is related to
other properties of these stars and, possibly, may provide anobservational
way to address the age issue in these stars.

With some of your equipment, our main expense would be in the mount, which
we have done before.

Let me know if this makes sense to you.

Cheers,
Bruce

Wm. Bruce Weaver, Ph.D.
Director

Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy
200 Eighth Street, Marina CA 93933
(831-883-1000) Fax: 883-1031
Dedicated to Research and Education in Astronomy For Over 30 Years.





On Sat, 15 Apr 2006, Thomas F. Droege wrote:

> Hi Bruce,
>
> If you have not been following tass, it will be a good idea to start
> with Show&Tell10, then the other S&T notes and then the technical notes
> and the service notes.  There are many pictures step by step as it goes
> together.
>
> Tom
>
> On Sat, 15 Apr 2006 12:34:14 -0700 (PDT), "Wm. Bruce Weaver PhD"
> <bw@mira.org> said:
> > Hi Tom,
> >
> > Your description of the requirements to operate the system matches my
> > expectations as we've been designing, building, and maintaining our
> > systems for 30 years.  This has involved all the aspects you've worked
> > with: optics, software, electronics, etc.
> >
> > My interest is not in all-sky but in specific selected areas of known
> > star
> > formation where intensive monitoring to observe the variability of T
> > Tauri
> > stars should be productive.  For starters, it will give spot behavior but
> > I am more interested in relating the characteristics of variability to
> > physical parameters and testing the very difficult-to-test
> > pre-main-sequence tracks.
> >
> > This is not to say I'm eager to take on someone else's problems.  We'd
> > want to determine what areas have been causing you the most problems and
> > see what it would take to make those areas more robust.  I'm hoping to
> > get
> > to look at your web site more carefully later today (we're busy trying to
> > meet a deadline to get our results on Deep Impact off to a journal).
> >
> > Bruce
> >
> > Wm. Bruce Weaver, Ph.D.
> > Director
> >
> > Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy
> > 200 Eighth Street, Marina CA 93933
> > (831-883-1000) Fax: 883-1031
> > Dedicated to Research and Education in Astronomy For Over 30 Years.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> --
>   Thomas F. Droege
>   droege@fastmail.fm
>