ARNE

[aah@nofs.navy.mil]

Just an update on the other remote system
(congratulations on making it back, Michael!).
  The shop guys are currently trenching for
laying conduit to contain the data cables.
The machinist is finishing a mounting plate
for ARNE, so that I can get the system level
and pointed to the North Pole.  The host
computer has RH 6.2 installed, and the
system administrator will be installing
transceivers on a fiber pair to the 1.0-m
computer room so that we can place the
host computer outside the firewall for Chris.
Hopefully, all of these tasks will be done
next week sometime (just in time for full moon!),
and I can get back to taking data.  In the
meantime, I am processing the 14 nights of
September data as well as two dozen disks
Tom has sent me from MICHAEL.
  Our normal winter weather is a one-day storm,
followed by two clear nights of terrible seeing
(but that won't be seen by the 7.5arcsec Mark IV
pixels), a night of cirrus, and then a repeat
of the cycle.  This means that about 50percent
of the time is photometric through the winter,
and since the nights are long, I expect to be
swamped in data.  Photometric nights will be
devoted to the all-sky survey, and nonphotometric
nights will be used for differential photometry
of variable star fields.
Arne