Search Results for 'Join'

[Dr Paul Leyland]

Jeremy’s recent update on the HR Lyr campaign prompted me to explore the VSS pages in greater detail.  Over there is a link to a fascinating article on the observation from the UK of variables with a declination more than 30 degrees south of the equator.  This got me thinking …

My observatory is at a latitude of 28.64 degrees north so, in principle, I could reach a declination of 90 – 28.64 – 0.5 = 61.9 degrees south, where the 0.5 allows for atmospheric refraction.  In practice, I don’t have a perfectly flat ocean horizon to the south.  Far from it: it’s very lumpy indeed.  However, omega Centauri, at 47.5 degrees south has been imaged successfully from here.

I’ll see what I can do.  Anything below -50 will be nice and, who knows, -55 might be possible.

Of course, other observers are encouraged to join in the fun, and should choose targets appropriate to their latitude.  I remember seeing a photo of the Big Dipper taken from northern Queensland where a couple of the stars were only two or three degrees above the horizon.

P.S.  The classical risque answer to the question posed in the subject is “Chihuahuas”. 😉

[Dr Andrew Smith]

Given the weather in my part of the world my kit is an increasingly wasted investment. I have looked at moving it to a remote European location with good clear skies but, the costs are quite high ( ~ £300 per mth) and I probably could not process all the data I could potentially generate.

These considerations have led me to make the following offer.

I would be happy to donate my kit to a small group of BAA members or the BAA as an institution to set up and jointly fund on an ongoing basis a remote observing facility for photometry and spectroscopy.

If individuals, I would think five including me would be a good number giving about a night’s worth of observing a week each.

The kit I have is a Paramount MEII with the Sky X on Desktop PC and an Orion Optics ODK 16. Together with and FLI an Atlas focuser and various two backs ends.

One has an Optec rotator with filter wheel and ASI1600mm CMOS camera for V,B photometry and SA200 spectroscopy. The second has a Foresight Innovations ONAG with a FLI ML8300 CCD acquisition camera, Shelyak Fibre Guide-head with Utrastar guide camera etc. plus fibre fed spectroscope (although this would need some modifications for higher night time temperatures and might not be fully practical).

Obviously happy to consider other backend options.

I realise swapping would require manual intervention but it could be made quite simple as the core system is very robust. Maybe one is enough in any case.

I would like to know if anyone is seriously interested in taking part in such a venture and or would the BAA as an institution be interested?

I would expect it to result in a formal agreement so it is clear what happened to the kit when I pass on, members drop out etc.

Regards Andrew

[Jeremy Shears]

We are now one month into the campaign and, whilst it’s still early days, it’s good to see the first data coming in. Many thanks to: David Boyd, Walter Cooney, Sjoerd Dufoer, Ian Miller, Ken Menzies, Martin Mobberley, Roger Pickard and Gary Poyner.

The star has varied between mag 15.4 and 16.2. Time series photometry by Roger Pickard and Ken Menzies has shown various humps and bumps in the light curve, but it’s too early to determine if they are periodic.

With Lyra becoming more accessible in the evening sky, I hope that further observations will begin to flow in. Do feel to join in the campaign. We are looking for nightly snapshot photometry to determine the overall shape of the light curve and well as some multi-hour photometry runs to look for short-term periodicities.

Further details about the campaign can be found here.

[Dominic Ford]

I struggle to see how you come to that conclusion, Roger.

On the ground, professionals have NGTS, WASP, HAT, KELT, not the mention several smaller exoplanet search programs. In space, professionals have TESS, soon to be joined by CHEOPS, and later PLATO. Right now, professional exoplanet search programmes are incredibly active, and will remain so for at least the next decade. Probably far beyond.

There’s relatively little professional effort going into biosignatures, because it’s basically impossible to detect them with current technology. Yes, people have pointed large telescopes (e.g. the VLT) with high-resolution spectrographs at bright stars, and picked up spectral lines in exoplanet atmospheres (NB: abundant things like water, not “biosignatures”). It’s impressive work, but only possible for a handful of the brightest stars, orbited by very large planets. When the ELT comes online in 2024, it will be possible for more stars, but we’ll still be talking about molecules like water and methane in the atmospheres of small numbers of giant planets.

I’m puzzled by this talk of amateur opportunities for the “discovery of exoplanets”. The best amateurs can achieve right now is to observe predicted deep transits, if they squint really hard at their photometry. That’s already very difficult, and far short of actually discovering a transit you didn’t already know about. Perhaps you’ll prove me wrong, but I’d consider my money pretty safe if I bet that there will be no amateur exoplanet discoveries in the next decade. Unless you plan to build a replica of the NGTS in your back garden…

[Roger Dymock]

Astrbiology seems to be generating considerable interest these days. Is it possible that professional exoplanet research will concentrate more and more on characterising exoplanets in particular searching for biosignatures ? If so this would give us amateurs greater opportunity in actual discovery of exoplanets. Asteroids and comets are mainly, but not always, discovered by professional surveys but perhaps exoplanets will go in the opposite direction. Come and join us !!!

[Kevin Gurney]

Just watched Andrew’s video (joint BAA/AAVSO)… Incredible rig, and I think I can see the differences with mine..

(i) Use of on axis guiding (ONAG) to help locate star

(ii) accurate pointing model

(iii) A guiding algorithm that ‘pulls in’ the star onto a *hole* – not a slit

I don’t bother with a pointing model – I sync to one star and then ‘star-hop’ using a guidescope with ZWO camera. I take my scope down periodically (if we are going to be away for more than a few days), so I figured getting a good pointing model would be a waste of time…

I dont have ONAG.

I use slit guiding with the target star (23mu or 34mu slit). I haven’t tested this to the limit to see how good it is as ‘pulling’ something in that isnt actually on the slit, but it does lose DEC sometimes and can oscillate in RA if not parameterised well, so I am not confident it would do this.

On the other hand I have written a script for attempting to position the star, once its in the guide cam image. It gets pretty close, but relies on human interaction to position cross hairs on the star in the first place.  I am happy with remote control just now without the full robotic thing but –  one day, one day 🙂

Kevin

[Dr Andrew Smith]

When I started down the road to spectroscopy automation I had and still have the main controlling PC in the observatory and a keyboard and mouse extender over an cat 5 cable to a room in the house. While the main PC ran a script I could interact directly if need be. This worked well when doing a search for possible Be stars looking at one every few minutes.

I also have a cat 5 cable onto my LAN hub and could link via wi fi to any PC in the house using Radmin. 

I now have fully automated the finding and capture process and do longer exposures without the need to inspect in real time. So I run a Python script that does all the work while I do other things. I keep a weather eye on it via a laptop via wi fi but I do find it drops out once a night on average.

Lamp switching is via a USB relay controlled by Python. All else is via two instances of The Sky X.

I think the video of the talk I gave on this at the joint BAA/AAVSO meeting is still available on this site.

Regards Andrew

[Mr Michael Alan Frost]

I visited the Temple Observatory a couple of times in the early 2000s. The head of science at Rugby school at the time was a member of Rugby AS and we were investigating the idea of Rugby AS or Coventry&Warks AS swapping expertise for observing time. We had a good view of the lunar terminator but not much success finding anything else. Enthusiasm for a joint venture waned when the head of science moved on. From time to time the Seabroke Society (Rugby School’s Astrosoc) recruit some enthusiastic youngsters but obviously they don’t stick around for long.

[Jeremy Shears]

An updated light curve of this variable covering the first two months of the campaign is shown on the BAA Variable Star Section website.

I’m pleased to say our efforts are paying dividends in revealing an very interesting light curve. So far we have observed 6 of its small oscillations. The 5th looks slightly different from the others in that it’s rise to max was slower.

As ever, more observations would be appreciated. It’s gratifying to see that the intensity of coverage has improved over the last month and it’s good to see new observers joining the campaign.

Very many thanks to everyone who has submitted observations so far: Richard Sabo, Ken Menzies, Gary Poyner, David Boyd, Dave Smith, Ian Miller, David Storey, Sjoerd Dufoer, Martin Mobberley, Jeremy Shears, James Boardman, George Fleming, M. Joslin.

Jeremy

[Callum Potter]

Thanks for alerting us Bill – actually the CPRE got a little ahead of us, as this is a joint BAA / CPRE project that we have been working on for the past couple of months. Helpfully the CPRE kindly offered to host the website submission forms and process the results.

I hope members will take part, and spread the word to their local societies, forums, and encourage friends and families to take part too.

Clear skies

Callum

[Dr Paul Leyland]

On 2018-11-30 I was imaging HL CMa, which many of you know is uncomfortably close to Sirius.  It’s essential to place the latter outside the field or it dazzles both CCDs and eyeballs.  However, at least there is a bright (far too bright) guide star nearby.  A SBIG-8 camera has a small CCD for guiding purposes and it was used with the minimum possible exposure time of 0.11 seconds.  Sirius was still over exposed but, to my surprise, the Pup showed up occasionally in the autoguider window.

After taking the science data another 100 images at 0.11s were taken of Sirius.  The one from the moment of best seeing appears here.  The blooming from Sirius runs from top to bottom on the full frame, of which this is only a small crop.  It’s fortunate that the camera was orientated at a good angle to the line joining the stars.

[Jeremy Shears]

Since the campaign was launched, the star appears to have been systematically varying by ~0.4 mags every ~9 days. A light curve can be seen on the BAA VSS website, which also has a link to further details on the campaign.

There have been a few gaps in data over the last 2 weeks as poor weather conditions have hit parts of Europe and the US.

Many thanks to Richard Sabo, Gary Poyner, David Boyd, Dave Smith, Ian Miller, David Storey, Sjoerd Dufoer and Martin Mobberley for their observations.

Please do join the campaign if you would like – we need one (or two) measurements per night.

[Jeremy Shears]

Since launching the campaign, we are getting some very interesting data submitted which so far shows two small outbursts separated by ~9 days. In fact we are now in the third cycle. Far too early to draw any conclusions, but it certainly looks like continuous stunted outbursts or oscillations similar to what has been observed in some nova like stars. The amplitude is ~0.4 mag, between mag 13.9 and 14.3.

Many thanks to Richard Sabo, Gary Poyner, David Boyd, Dave Smith, Ian Miller, David Storey and Sjoerd Dufoer for your observations.

Keep up the good work!

Other observers would be most welcome to join in.

All the best,

Jeremy

[Jeremy Shears]

Hello John,

I’m running a campaign on a far northerly cataclysmic variable over the next 3 months. This is photometry, rather than spectroscopy, but you’d be welcome to join.

Jeremy 

[Dr Paul Leyland]

Welcome aboard!  I’m a newbie on the forums and only re-joined the BAA a few months ago after a 30-year hiatus.

Your image looks pretty impressive to me.  Much better than I could produce given my (present) incompetence at driving my newly acquired equipment.

[Kevin Gurney]

Has anyone tried to join this recently? I have tried to register at least twice now with no response… Perhaps I am blacklisted!

Kevin

[Andy Wilson]

Hi John (and anyone else who is following this thread).

We have identified the problem. It was related to family membership where the first person to join the BAA is not the person who currently pays the subscription. We will be requesting a change to our systems to cope with this scenario. In the interim we can get around it for any affected members. I will be running a check later in the week to see if there are any other members who may be affected.

Kind regards,

Andy

[Andy Wilson]

Hi John,

First of all my apologies that you are experiencing problems with your renewal.

That is clearly not right. I am just starting some testing to try to identify the problem but please bear with me as I will only have intermittent access to the BAA systems for the next couple of days.

I can see one thing that might explain it to do with joint membership and a shared email address. The system should be able to cope with this, but I suspect it does not. I will email you about this separately so we can try out a few things without posting every detail on the forum.

Kind regards,

Andy Wilson

BAA Systems Administrator and Web Content Editor

[Kevin Gurney]

I thought I would ask this in a separate thread as its a matter of principle and nothing to do with tweaking the kit.

So, with the Alpy, we are enjoined to take the spectrum of a nearby reference star (typically in MILES database) and use this to obtain an instrument response (IR). I can see this works for low resolution, because it makes sense to talk about the  continuum response  (smooth curve, ignoring line features). However, with high resolution, its quite often the case that the bulk of the spectrum is a line feature (I am thinking of Vega’s Ha line, for example).

So, how do we define the continuum respone in this case? And should we be trying to replicate the IR calibration step using a companion reference spectrum, as per low res (Alpy etc)?  Could you get away with some stock spectra you have taken at different air-masses? Or just rectify the spectrum and obviate the problem at source, as it were?

Cheers

Kevin

[Dr Richard John McKim]

The Moment magazine now carries a short interview with me about George. The magazine now gives details of the lecture, which I have added below:

Peterborough’s Astronomer
Tues 23 Oct, 7.30-9pm
Peterborough Cathedral Visitor Centre
Tickets: £5
To book: 01733 355315, http://www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/events
George Alcock was a prolific Peterborough-based amateur astronomer, commemorated by a memorial tablet in Peterborough Cathedral. Join Dr Richard McKim – a member of the British Astronomical Association – for an illustrated talk about Alcock’s life and work.