Morning all,
There may, might, hopefully will be a small break in the cloud cover above the obs around Friday, according to the 'Clear Outside' forecast. If it doesn't then I may be about to waste your time. The forecast after that is not promising.
If that one short opportunity did arise, then I wonder if others might agree to using as much of that time concentrating on getting some data back. Given the absence of the moon one priority could be purely broadband target(s), the other to be the total /outstanding imaging time. Do we concentrate on just one or perhaps try for two or more. Your choice. I did resubmit M31 but that can wait for the next time.
Selecting targets from the pier queue is difficult right now as there are so many that cannot be viewed using Phil's new wonderful submissions list. What is needed is more information on some of the targets. If everyone is happy to go along with the criteria of only selecting short imaging runs then from the present queue I see the following -
M42 OAG test
P14 coor 128 what is this?
P14 m66
M82 - 5hours to complete
(most of the data will have the shadow obstruction, but I would probably do a large crop to remove it and leave it to Peter to produce a masterpiece in its entirety)
There could be time to complete one of the others instead if the positioning of any of the above is not favourable, maybe anything that is about 6 hours and remains imageable for the whole of that time.
EDIT :
Peter has since made me aware that when doing a manual override only one target can be captured. So we ideally need a target that is circumpolar-ish, "up" all night. I believe the imaging hours, using Telescopius are between 19:15 and 05:15, please correct me if I'm wrong. That's a maximum of 10 hours if the target is effectively circumpolar, but allowing for positioning, downloads, dithering, filter changes, meridian flip, say a max of just over 9 hours. Ideally entered as 2 sets of exposures, each set comprising half of the number of exposures for each filter. That way, if clouds interrupt then at least we should have "half of a full set" to work on.
END OF EDIT.
What I haven't looked into and will need consideration are the times each chosen target can be imaged. We need a spread of times. Most importantly and goodness knows why I put it last, is, is it even possible to manually control the pier queue to override the algorithm.
Any other suggestions to do something else with the time, that would be far simpler and easier to do. We could just leave things the way they are of course.
Screenshot of queue below.
Further information.
M42 imageable from about 19:15 to 23:30 approx, so may be a bit tight on time?
M66 imageable 21:30 to 05:45 approx
M82 imageable all night long
Don't know what other target is.
There may, might, hopefully will be a small break in the cloud cover above the obs around Friday, according to the 'Clear Outside' forecast. If it doesn't then I may be about to waste your time. The forecast after that is not promising.
If that one short opportunity did arise, then I wonder if others might agree to using as much of that time concentrating on getting some data back. Given the absence of the moon one priority could be purely broadband target(s), the other to be the total /outstanding imaging time. Do we concentrate on just one or perhaps try for two or more. Your choice. I did resubmit M31 but that can wait for the next time.
Selecting targets from the pier queue is difficult right now as there are so many that cannot be viewed using Phil's new wonderful submissions list. What is needed is more information on some of the targets. If everyone is happy to go along with the criteria of only selecting short imaging runs then from the present queue I see the following -
M42 OAG test
P14 coor 128 what is this?
P14 m66
M82 - 5hours to complete
(most of the data will have the shadow obstruction, but I would probably do a large crop to remove it and leave it to Peter to produce a masterpiece in its entirety)
There could be time to complete one of the others instead if the positioning of any of the above is not favourable, maybe anything that is about 6 hours and remains imageable for the whole of that time.
EDIT :
Peter has since made me aware that when doing a manual override only one target can be captured. So we ideally need a target that is circumpolar-ish, "up" all night. I believe the imaging hours, using Telescopius are between 19:15 and 05:15, please correct me if I'm wrong. That's a maximum of 10 hours if the target is effectively circumpolar, but allowing for positioning, downloads, dithering, filter changes, meridian flip, say a max of just over 9 hours. Ideally entered as 2 sets of exposures, each set comprising half of the number of exposures for each filter. That way, if clouds interrupt then at least we should have "half of a full set" to work on.
END OF EDIT.
What I haven't looked into and will need consideration are the times each chosen target can be imaged. We need a spread of times. Most importantly and goodness knows why I put it last, is, is it even possible to manually control the pier queue to override the algorithm.
Any other suggestions to do something else with the time, that would be far simpler and easier to do. We could just leave things the way they are of course.
Screenshot of queue below.
Further information.
M42 imageable from about 19:15 to 23:30 approx, so may be a bit tight on time?
M66 imageable 21:30 to 05:45 approx
M82 imageable all night long
Don't know what other target is.
Ray
Roboscopes Guinea Pig
No worries,
to be fair I enjoy this side of things and find it a fun and interesting challenge to run the observatory automated systems as a whole. I thought it may prove a useful insight for you both. Predicting sky temps to best reduce the influence of high cloud and haze but still leaving enough scope so the roof will open and the equipment images. As it happens last nights -25 was ok for the shakedown but -26 would have been better for quality imaging as well as stopping the roof doing Yo-yo mode
forecast for this evening should be better so let’s see how it goes
steve
to be fair I enjoy this side of things and find it a fun and interesting challenge to run the observatory automated systems as a whole. I thought it may prove a useful insight for you both. Predicting sky temps to best reduce the influence of high cloud and haze but still leaving enough scope so the roof will open and the equipment images. As it happens last nights -25 was ok for the shakedown but -26 would have been better for quality imaging as well as stopping the roof doing Yo-yo mode
forecast for this evening should be better so let’s see how it goes
steve
Please ignore my dylexia wherever possible, just be thankful I can control my Tourettes ;)
Things to do, so little time!
Steve
Roboscopes Tea Boy
Hi all
As I supsected the weather is clear with high haze quite a lot this week, so I am going to get P14 to image as long as it does not get so bad but some variations in data quality are to be expected. data is data at the end of the day and it gives you some stuff to be able to evaluate and play. you can always pop the job back in if you wish
I am checking that you are Ok with my take on the situation, as I can just as easily leave it closed ?
Steve
As I supsected the weather is clear with high haze quite a lot this week, so I am going to get P14 to image as long as it does not get so bad but some variations in data quality are to be expected. data is data at the end of the day and it gives you some stuff to be able to evaluate and play. you can always pop the job back in if you wish
I am checking that you are Ok with my take on the situation, as I can just as easily leave it closed ?
Steve
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Steve,
Thank you for that suggestion. I'd be very keen to go with that. After all, even if the success rate is fairly low it still means we would have to resubmit less next time.
Cheers,
Ray
Thank you for that suggestion. I'd be very keen to go with that. After all, even if the success rate is fairly low it still means we would have to resubmit less next time.
Cheers,
Ray
Ray
Roboscopes Guinea Pig
Last night was quite unusual and the sky was a little better than I had hoped, however we had strong gusts instead which is quite rare for our location. The only reason I can think of for this is because we were at the right hand edge of the main weather front. So although we were clear all night the pesky wind was our nemesis for a change 
It did make me think as some of you like to check weather as well as general sky conditions etc I thought just in case you did not know how our AAG display worked I would add a quick explanation about the red dotted lines.
1 - Sky temperature switch limit
This is a fluid limit that depends upon a lot of factors like ambient temperature, time of years etc, I personally adjust this throughout the year. This switch limit has a 60 second delay in case its simply a scudding cloud passing by.
2 - Wind speed limit
This is fairly fixed and we have not altered it in over a year, we have it set quite low as our walls are low to take advantage of low objects otherwise off limits at our latitude. The little dots represent gusts that in this case caused the equipment to shut down.
3 - Rain Limit switch
We have this one set quite low for obvious reasons but in most cases cloud cover will close the roof well before the rain sensor even gets a peek at rain drops
It did make me think as some of you like to check weather as well as general sky conditions etc I thought just in case you did not know how our AAG display worked I would add a quick explanation about the red dotted lines.
1 - Sky temperature switch limit
This is a fluid limit that depends upon a lot of factors like ambient temperature, time of years etc, I personally adjust this throughout the year. This switch limit has a 60 second delay in case its simply a scudding cloud passing by.
2 - Wind speed limit
This is fairly fixed and we have not altered it in over a year, we have it set quite low as our walls are low to take advantage of low objects otherwise off limits at our latitude. The little dots represent gusts that in this case caused the equipment to shut down.
3 - Rain Limit switch
We have this one set quite low for obvious reasons but in most cases cloud cover will close the roof well before the rain sensor even gets a peek at rain drops
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