And now 135 to go to reach Top 3 spot! :-)
samedi 28 juillet 2018
BeSS : 1000th Be Star Spectra !
A key milestone for me tonight : reaching 1000 Halpha Be Star Spectra in BeSS databse, including 750 taken at the Observatoire de la Belle Etoile under the dome with echelle spectrograph.
And now 135 to go to reach Top 3 spot! :-)
And now 135 to go to reach Top 3 spot! :-)
dimanche 1 juillet 2018
Using VisualSpec to check your Be star spectra
Okay, installing VisualSpec is not always an easy thing to do. Here are my tip & tricks - well, it did work for me so here it is.
First, what is VisualSpec? It is a free software that is widely used in the astronomical spectroscopy community that can read spectral profiles and analyse them. It is also connected to BeSS Be Star Spectra database so it makes it easy to compare your own spectra with latest ones in the database or perform some report/analysis of any Be star you like!
VisualSpec is available there: http://astrosurf.com/vdesnoux/
After setup, here is a trick to register the tabctl32.ocx file VisulSpec needs. It is taken from: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/tabctl32ocx-file-missing/1d615fca-1414-4d79-8951-5d6353ed3105
From there, open VisualSpec and open a spectral profile (you can also drag-drop a FITS file from Windows explorer) - here I am looking at my order 34, ie Halpha, of 12 Vul:
Activate the link to CDS by using the menu Assistant / CDS Query. Just to click on the small buton to fill in automatically the target name and OK. It will open a web page from the CDS, just leave it open for your VIsualSpec session.
Then click on the BeSS icone at the bottom right:
VisualSpec does some analysis of the wavelength calibration (usefull to check your calibration is okay) and open the last two spectral profile from BeSS database so it is very easy to check if there has been any change (for exemple an outburst)!
First, what is VisualSpec? It is a free software that is widely used in the astronomical spectroscopy community that can read spectral profiles and analyse them. It is also connected to BeSS Be Star Spectra database so it makes it easy to compare your own spectra with latest ones in the database or perform some report/analysis of any Be star you like!
VisualSpec is available there: http://astrosurf.com/vdesnoux/
After setup, here is a trick to register the tabctl32.ocx file VisulSpec needs. It is taken from: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/tabctl32ocx-file-missing/1d615fca-1414-4d79-8951-5d6353ed3105
Step 1: Open a command prompt with Administrator privileges:
- Click Start, type in cmd in the Start Menu search box, right click on the cmd option displayed in the search results, and click on Run as Administrator.
- Click on Allow or Continue at the User Account Control prompt that should be displayed next.
Now you should have a command prompt with Administrator privileges open.
Step 2: Execute a re-registering process of the
tabctl32.ocx file by running the following commands one after the other.
I am providing one command in one line, type them in one by one and hit
Enter after each command (assuming VisualSpec is installed in the C:\vspec directory otherwise change it to your setup):
- cd \vspec
- regsvr32 /u comct332.ocx
regsvr32 /u comdlg32.ocx
regsvr32 comdlg32.ocx
regsvr32 comct332.ocx
regsvr32 /u mscomct2.ocx
regsvr32 mscomct2.ocx
regsvr32 /u mscomctl.ocx
regsvr32 mscomctl.ocx
regsvr32 /u MyConsole.ocx
regsvr32 MyConsole.ocx
regsvr32 /u RichtX32.ocx
regsvr32 RichtX32.ocx
regsvr32 /u tabctl32.ocx
regsvr32 tabctl32.ocx - exit
From there, open VisualSpec and open a spectral profile (you can also drag-drop a FITS file from Windows explorer) - here I am looking at my order 34, ie Halpha, of 12 Vul:
Activate the link to CDS by using the menu Assistant / CDS Query. Just to click on the small buton to fill in automatically the target name and OK. It will open a web page from the CDS, just leave it open for your VIsualSpec session.
Then click on the BeSS icone at the bottom right:
observatory surrounded by flowers
2018 first semester Obs Log
I am keeping log of my astronomical specteoscopy observations and here is my status as of end of june 2018.
First of all, all my spectra have been uploaded in BeSS.I am #1 in terms of number of spectra (each echelle order count as 1) and I am reaching 20000 of them so far as today's count is 19924 but I have 299 more waiting for validation.
My next goal is to reach 1000 spectra in Halpha alone.
I keep my log in an Open Office Calc spreadsheet. An overall analysis show that the first quarter of 2017 has been terrible (due to very very bad weather this year and lot of rain) but the second one okay specially as all second part of june has been clear (12 nights from june 15th to june 30th).
Overall, I have observed 173 nights (N) or evening (S) at the Observatory of Belle Etoile, accumulating 846 spectra and a total of 2.7 million seconds of exposure time.
The important thing is that the donload time has now decreased to 3% with the help of some scripting (AcqTarget.pgm) and the % of use time is high despite short nights and fix overhead (calibration frames done once every night) - a "Start&Calib.pgm" script has been helpful too.
To reach my goal of 1000 Halpha spectra, I have 52 more to go. I note that 82% of my spectra are Be stars, those are my main and only targets at the moment.
Total exposure (photon) time is reaching 794 hours (equivalent of 33 days!) and the percentage of useful time (photon time over total observatory opening time) is now around 80%.
The percentage of use time is impacted by several failure. I have logged all of them for the past 82 nights and woekd on them.
The focuser was returning several time an interface error. It is going through a USB/RS232 interface so not very reliable but increasing the interrogation time from 1sec to 5sec in PRISM software really improved it (same for the Losmandy Titan Gemini.Net ASCOM interface: PRISM is by default talking to the equipment too frequently that it crashes).
The main problem remaining is the connection with the Atik camera. I noted that the memory allocation to PRISM was increasing when using the autoguiding camera. I suspect a memory leak but there seems to be an issue with Atik drver and the way PRISM handle it - too many services crsshing and memory not released then. On typical night, memory allocated increased to more than 3.5GB and then crash (either freeze during image download, memory crash...). This has been reported to PRISM and Atik and a solution should come to improve reliability of the overall system. In the mean time, I quit and rerun PRISM every 4 hours and this does the trick...
Other failur are more spread out and several are user errors. I also noted a weakness with the dome shelter battery which doesn't recharge through the solar panel so I manually recharge it from time to time, every 15 observing nights or every month whatever comes first.
Last but not least, I have switchd to 1x1 binning. There is some pro & cons. I may switch back to 2x2 mainly to reduce the disk space (larger image file size) and reduce download and backup time. At the moment, I am still operating at 1x1 binning.
First of all, all my spectra have been uploaded in BeSS.I am #1 in terms of number of spectra (each echelle order count as 1) and I am reaching 20000 of them so far as today's count is 19924 but I have 299 more waiting for validation.
My next goal is to reach 1000 spectra in Halpha alone.
I keep my log in an Open Office Calc spreadsheet. An overall analysis show that the first quarter of 2017 has been terrible (due to very very bad weather this year and lot of rain) but the second one okay specially as all second part of june has been clear (12 nights from june 15th to june 30th).
Overall, I have observed 173 nights (N) or evening (S) at the Observatory of Belle Etoile, accumulating 846 spectra and a total of 2.7 million seconds of exposure time.
The important thing is that the donload time has now decreased to 3% with the help of some scripting (AcqTarget.pgm) and the % of use time is high despite short nights and fix overhead (calibration frames done once every night) - a "Start&Calib.pgm" script has been helpful too.
To reach my goal of 1000 Halpha spectra, I have 52 more to go. I note that 82% of my spectra are Be stars, those are my main and only targets at the moment.
Total exposure (photon) time is reaching 794 hours (equivalent of 33 days!) and the percentage of useful time (photon time over total observatory opening time) is now around 80%.
The percentage of use time is impacted by several failure. I have logged all of them for the past 82 nights and woekd on them.
The focuser was returning several time an interface error. It is going through a USB/RS232 interface so not very reliable but increasing the interrogation time from 1sec to 5sec in PRISM software really improved it (same for the Losmandy Titan Gemini.Net ASCOM interface: PRISM is by default talking to the equipment too frequently that it crashes).
The main problem remaining is the connection with the Atik camera. I noted that the memory allocation to PRISM was increasing when using the autoguiding camera. I suspect a memory leak but there seems to be an issue with Atik drver and the way PRISM handle it - too many services crsshing and memory not released then. On typical night, memory allocated increased to more than 3.5GB and then crash (either freeze during image download, memory crash...). This has been reported to PRISM and Atik and a solution should come to improve reliability of the overall system. In the mean time, I quit and rerun PRISM every 4 hours and this does the trick...
Other failur are more spread out and several are user errors. I also noted a weakness with the dome shelter battery which doesn't recharge through the solar panel so I manually recharge it from time to time, every 15 observing nights or every month whatever comes first.
Last but not least, I have switchd to 1x1 binning. There is some pro & cons. I may switch back to 2x2 mainly to reduce the disk space (larger image file size) and reduce download and backup time. At the moment, I am still operating at 1x1 binning.
Angelo Secchi 200 years anniversary
According to Wikipedia, Angelo Secchi was born on june 28th, 1818. Two hundred years later, I took a spectrum of beta Lyrae to commemorate his birth as he is the one that discovered Be stars such as gamma Cas and beta Lyrae.
To add some twist to it, it happend that I was in a business trip in Lille that night so I acquired the spectrum remotely and using my smart phone - what great technologies we have nowadays!
The summer is there we have lot of great (but short) nights. I have been observing twelve night since june 15th and I have passed the 20000 spectra/orders in BeSS milestone now. Next goal is 1000 Halpha spectra there!
To add some twist to it, it happend that I was in a business trip in Lille that night so I acquired the spectrum remotely and using my smart phone - what great technologies we have nowadays!
The summer is there we have lot of great (but short) nights. I have been observing twelve night since june 15th and I have passed the 20000 spectra/orders in BeSS milestone now. Next goal is 1000 Halpha spectra there!
Milky way from home with our latest TZ100 Lumix camera
One single 30sec exposure!
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