Search Results for 'Join'

[Eric Watkins]

 Derek,

a nice capture.  I’ve just acquired similar equipment with the help of William Stewart and I’m in the process of setting it up. I  Just need  to get a nice focus, and settings but the weather is against me at the moment.

Hope to join the team any night now

Eric

[Derek Robson]

The beams look like they are not parallel between zero and 1st order. But I thought that’s the way the physics worked – the light is diffracted through an angle relative to the incident light.  I’ve done a series of repeatability tests by firing LASERs at roof tops and aerials (in the dead of night) and will be looking at the spread of the distances from the zero order. But this is on dots, not the beams.  I’m looking at the target as the source of the LASER light coming back to the sensor. Some images on the wide angle lens show the beams at angles. But we know even parallel roads will join together in the distance (perspective).  I’m measuring the position of the diffracted dot relative to the zero order dot. That should show if there is any non linearity in the wavelength range I guess.  Another problem is, the diffraction gratings are plastic, so they are not rigid, and can bend, causing curved spectra (curvature along the wavelength axis). But despite that variation, I hope that will be insignificant and not interfere significantly, or at all, with identifying elements. 

[Tim Haymes]

Observers who may be hoping to see a graze in 2020, will find the predictions in the download area under Lunar Section. https://britastro.org/downloads/17673   Here i have prepared the information for each event on page 42-43 of the BAAH 2020. The grazes listed are in prediction order and star name. The zip files can be downloaded to your computer, and unzipped to reveal thee files.  An explanation is given on the downloads page.  

On a related topic, the UKoccultations Yahoo Group i set up in 2013, has been moved to https://groups.io/g/UKoccultations  The reason is that the Yahoo Groups host is not being supported now.  You are welcome to join the new group.

Please report any graze attempts or even results, to the Lunar Section or the discussion group.

Wishing you good observing – and thank you to the Lunar section Web Manager for assistance.

Tim
(Lunar Section Graze Coordinator)

[Robin Leadbeater]

I am not a member of the “12a Collaboration” but there must be some of the VSS Section who are on here. If not, I am sure an email to Dr Matt Darnley at LJMU would bring you up to speed if you want to join the collaboration.

Cheers

Robin

[Peter Meadows]

I thought I recognised the comet photo in the Mirror article – it is Comet West 1975 VI from 1976 – see the following link

https://enacademic.com/pictures/enwiki/67/C_1975_V1_%28West%29_1976-03-09_6h_UTC.jpg

I was new to astronomy back then but heard about this comet but failed to see it in the pre-dawn sky – I then joined ‘The Astronomer’ to make sure I didn’t miss any other bright comets!

[Martin Lewis]

Can I draw members attention to a joint BAA/SPA workshop next June on Advanced Planetary Imaging which David Arditti and I are organising. For more information go to; https://britastro.org/node/19008

Hope to see some of you there,

Regards,

Martin Lewis

[Richard Miles]

(3200) Phaeton is one of those asteroid-comet transition objects, so is particularly interesting. I see the article you refer to was the subject of a presentation by Teddy Kareta at the AAS Division of Planetary Sciences meeting last October. I have been corresponding with Teddy on another topic in recent months and am hoping to be a joint author on his latest paper.

Concerning Phaeton, Alex Pratt has recently drawn our attention to a successful occultation campaign to measure its shape. A couple of weeks ago the object underwent a stellar occultation as seen from the USA and we now know that its silhouette measures 5.7 x 4.7 km. See:

http://iota.jhuapl.edu/20190729PhaethonAug09.ppt

It is also on a target list of objects to be visited by the DESTINY+ space probe due to launch in 2022.

[Dr Paul Leyland]

Have you downloaded the complete GCVS?  If so a preliminary selection based on a minimum Dec, a plausible range of RA and a type of EA, EB, … will give you an initial range of candidates.

What do you consider high-cadence? Minutes, seconds or milliseconds?

My 0.4m telescope (located only about 100km from El Teide) could manage a very few millimags precision (unfiltered CCD, so approximately Gaia G band) down to mag 11.5 with a cadence of around a minute as demonstrated with an observation of an exoplanet transit.

In fact, why don’t you try for an exoplanet transit?  Not only do you get your differential timing data, you also add to our knowedge of exoplanets.  The minimum may be wide but the ingress and egress events are short-lived and it’s generally possible to observe both in a single session.

Would you like me to join in perhaps, weather permitting?  It’s been unusually cloudy in these parts of late.  I also need to get the new camera commissioned first but I hope that doesn’t take too long.

[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.