dimanche 7 juillet 2019
Visit at OBE - Cyril Cavadore
July 5th/6th the observatory had the visit of Cyril Cavadore from Alcor System and programmer of PRISM software. Lot of discussion around astronomy and of course BBQ/pool... :-)
samedi 6 juillet 2019
pi Aqr - a change in the disk structure during 2014-2018
A new article has been published, led by Yael Nazé from Liège observatory, with the help of spectra acquired by amateur and uploaded in BeSS database.
The article is available there:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1906.09030
It shows that pi Aqr emission is increasing since 2014 (when it almost disapeared) but that the V/R modulation is decreasing indicating the loss of disk assymetrical structure (or disk becoming more homogeneous).
In any case, this article is the perfect exemple of how a professional astronomer can use our amateur spectra: amateur co-author of the article (sorted by number of spectra used for the article), amateur associated with the publication and the referee process, and at the end some scientific value from the raw data we provided.
This is clearly higly motivating and I can't express my thanks largely enough to Yael Nazé for doing this!
The article is available there:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1906.09030
It shows that pi Aqr emission is increasing since 2014 (when it almost disapeared) but that the V/R modulation is decreasing indicating the loss of disk assymetrical structure (or disk becoming more homogeneous).
In any case, this article is the perfect exemple of how a professional astronomer can use our amateur spectra: amateur co-author of the article (sorted by number of spectra used for the article), amateur associated with the publication and the referee process, and at the end some scientific value from the raw data we provided.
This is clearly higly motivating and I can't express my thanks largely enough to Yael Nazé for doing this!
A new guiding camera - Zwo ASI174MM
Atik changed their drivers and I couldn't connect them in PRISM anymore. Also, when looking at my pareto of failure root cause, I had a third due to Atik cameras. Of course it is not clear whre the exact issue is but there seems to be a memory leak with the Atik Titan and the driver/software chain. And lot of unstability.
Anyway, I decided to replace my Atik Titan guiding camera and I purchased a Zwo ASI174MM after couple of tries with my ASI 178MC (color) camera which were not very successful. With the 174MM it went very smooth, very nice images (and LARGE field of view now!).
I reprogrammed the script with this new camera, I added a bias frame when doing guiding calibration (much better images) to avoid guiding going crazy on some popcorn pixels... Anyway, early july I am now running this new camera and I am able to do Astrometry.Net astrometry easier with the large field of view.
Anyway, I decided to replace my Atik Titan guiding camera and I purchased a Zwo ASI174MM after couple of tries with my ASI 178MC (color) camera which were not very successful. With the 174MM it went very smooth, very nice images (and LARGE field of view now!).
I reprogrammed the script with this new camera, I added a bias frame when doing guiding calibration (much better images) to avoid guiding going crazy on some popcorn pixels... Anyway, early july I am now running this new camera and I am able to do Astrometry.Net astrometry easier with the large field of view.
Spring at the observatory
the new Zwo ASI174MM guiding camera
evening, after work, at the observatory! :-)
morning end of the semi-automated observing session
June 2019: a good month
June 2019 was the first month after several of bad weather and a broken Gemini I controler. After replacing it with the Gemini II, and also replacing the original Losmandy Titan mountmotors by stronger Maxxon ones, this month was the finetuning of the new version of the script taking into account those changes as well as a change in the guiding camera.
It is not working 100% yet but I have been abe to observe 20 nights during the month of june and acquire 65 spectra - not too bad considering the short nights during this month!
I have currently 48 spectra (1104 orders) pending validation in BeSS database... :-)
I hope july-september trimester will bring lot of clear nights and even more specrra with longuer nights coming. the season is nice for Be star spectra as Cygnus is rigin up in the evening now. And soon V442 And will be visible in the morning for me (I'll have to cut some trees to help!).
As weather is very very hot (the warmest with some record in France in june!), he pool is welcome as well.
It is not working 100% yet but I have been abe to observe 20 nights during the month of june and acquire 65 spectra - not too bad considering the short nights during this month!
I have currently 48 spectra (1104 orders) pending validation in BeSS database... :-)
I hope july-september trimester will bring lot of clear nights and even more specrra with longuer nights coming. the season is nice for Be star spectra as Cygnus is rigin up in the evening now. And soon V442 And will be visible in the morning for me (I'll have to cut some trees to help!).
As weather is very very hot (the warmest with some record in France in june!), he pool is welcome as well.
reading before starting the semi-automated observing script
spectra waiting for validation in BeSS
jeudi 6 juin 2019
Three months downtime
OK, it took a while for me to work on the Gemini II installation. Physical installation of the new telescope mount controling system and motors went easy. Software was more complicated!
First, ASCOM isn't compatible between Gemini I and Gemini II and I took lot of times because it looked so... At the end, I started from scratch. I took some time to find out that you need to set the mount as "Titan" in the Gemini and "Titan50" in ASCOM - now figue why... :-)
I was very surprised by the improvement in GOTO accuracy. With no pointing model, I am able to go from one target to another one within 40-60° and still have it in the small guiding field of view.
That's for the Gemini II installation but because of the three months downtime, I faced several (too many!) problems:
1/ WINDOWS (win10) was updated of course, it just never stops!
2/ when updating prism, AVIRA antivirus blocked update.exe software and I could'nt restore it so my best option was to get rid of Avira and use Defender instead... but so much time lost on this issue!
3/ With the current PRISM version, the OFFSET_TELESCOPE function doesn't work anymore, not sure why but it looks like a regression!
4/ ATIK drivers were updated and it now doesn't work in prism as ArtemisHSC.dll can't be found. I am able to use Ascom which may not be a bad thing as it better recognize each camera compare to direct driver interface. But the drawback is that now starting autoguiding from the script (STARTGUIDECONSIGNE) fails all the time and I can't figure out why. My only option for now is to have a manual interuption of the script to manually launch ans stop autoguiding so my observations are now less automated!
Anyway, I am now back to observation (I lost around 15 nights), but I have to wake up between each target for manual intervention... I hope to find a solution for this STARTGUIDECONSIGNE issue; one option is to replace the Atik Titan by another non Atik camera and see how it works...
Despite the better GOTO accuracy, the new system seems better in autoguiding and I have some surprising increase in light efficiency during the first nights I tested it. Almost 30% improvement in spectra SNR - I now need to reduce my exposure times to reach the SNR=100 target. Because it is less automated I am leaving the parameters as is but when I find a solution for the autoguiding, then it should increase the number of spectra per night.
First, ASCOM isn't compatible between Gemini I and Gemini II and I took lot of times because it looked so... At the end, I started from scratch. I took some time to find out that you need to set the mount as "Titan" in the Gemini and "Titan50" in ASCOM - now figue why... :-)
I was very surprised by the improvement in GOTO accuracy. With no pointing model, I am able to go from one target to another one within 40-60° and still have it in the small guiding field of view.
That's for the Gemini II installation but because of the three months downtime, I faced several (too many!) problems:
1/ WINDOWS (win10) was updated of course, it just never stops!
2/ when updating prism, AVIRA antivirus blocked update.exe software and I could'nt restore it so my best option was to get rid of Avira and use Defender instead... but so much time lost on this issue!
3/ With the current PRISM version, the OFFSET_TELESCOPE function doesn't work anymore, not sure why but it looks like a regression!
4/ ATIK drivers were updated and it now doesn't work in prism as ArtemisHSC.dll can't be found. I am able to use Ascom which may not be a bad thing as it better recognize each camera compare to direct driver interface. But the drawback is that now starting autoguiding from the script (STARTGUIDECONSIGNE) fails all the time and I can't figure out why. My only option for now is to have a manual interuption of the script to manually launch ans stop autoguiding so my observations are now less automated!
Anyway, I am now back to observation (I lost around 15 nights), but I have to wake up between each target for manual intervention... I hope to find a solution for this STARTGUIDECONSIGNE issue; one option is to replace the Atik Titan by another non Atik camera and see how it works...
Despite the better GOTO accuracy, the new system seems better in autoguiding and I have some surprising increase in light efficiency during the first nights I tested it. Almost 30% improvement in spectra SNR - I now need to reduce my exposure times to reach the SNR=100 target. Because it is less automated I am leaving the parameters as is but when I find a solution for the autoguiding, then it should increase the number of spectra per night.
dimanche 14 avril 2019
Gemini II
Since february 27th, my mount was down due to technical trouble with the motors and the Gemini system. I decided to upgrade it with Gemini II and more porerfull Maxon motors. I just installed it today and used the same parameters as before (ie: same pointing model). It seems to work nicely!
I think I lost about 15 nights due to this issue. I hope the semi-automated script still work on this new system but I believe it should...
I think I lost about 15 nights due to this issue. I hope the semi-automated script still work on this new system but I believe it should...
mercredi 27 février 2019
Big fireball of february 27th
On february 27th morning, around 4h24 UT (5h24 local time), my all sky camera captured a bright fireball which was also detected by 15 other FRIPON stations.
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