Progress Report from Cincinnati

["Michael Gutzwiller" <deepsky@fuse.net>]

It's been a while since I published a report on progress in Cincinnati so
here goes.

The main effort here in Cincinnati has been on four fronts:

1) writing the control program,
2) alignment, calibration and operations development,
3) development of an observation plan and
4) analysis of engineering data.

The control program at this point fits my needs though there are several
improvements that could be made.  Most notably lacking is the ability to
control the focus motors.  I don't need that right now since the cameras are
pretty well focused as it is.

The camera is better aligned now.  I can still improve it though.  The RA
drift is about 0.27 degrees over two hours.  It is linear so I should be
able to adjust it by setting the VCO DAC value.  The equatorial axis seems
to be off 0.6 degrees (if my calculations are correct).  I should be able to
adjust this with some small shims.  I have been able to eliminate ice
crystals in the V camera by running dry air through the camera about an hour
before taking images.

My first observation plan is to look at the celestial equator and follow in
RA for 2 hours.  I also plan to center the image (at least at first) on RA
values which are multiples of 30 degrees.  This way I can generate multiple
nights worth of data on certain regions of the sky instead of starting at a
random RA value each night.  Concentrating on the celestial equator will
allow me to use multiple Landolt standards for color calibration later.  I
still need a viable plan for generating flats.  Right now I'm thinking of
automatically generating twilight flats at the end of each observing session
but I don't know if there will be enough time to generate a good set of
flats.  Right now I'm creating 2 minute exposures every 3 minutes.

I have been looking at the data I've generated so far and am also getting a
base of about 0.01 magnitudes sigma for bright stars.  I'm using my own
pipeline based on the code used for the Mark III data analysis.


Mike G.