Weather
A truly spectacular evening! Great transparency and seeing is around 1.6 arcsec. Low temp in the upper 50s, low humidity, and no wind.
Rig 1 / South Dome
Another sequence for the BRITE campaign – P Cyg and Deneb. Also getting a series H-alpha region spectra of Nova Cygnii 2014.
Rig 2 / North Dome
Started with DQ Her but made so many mistakes getting set up that I just “hit reset” and decided instead to do V2069 Cyg. The pier plate for the new AP1200 can’t come soon enough!
AP Hand Controllers Updated
I downloaded and installed the latest hand controller software (V4.17) and installed on both of the units. I had a lot of trouble with the older hand controller – it kept clicking off and on every time I tried to press buttons to enter data. It often seemed to loose power and switches off and back on – something I’ve noticed ever since starting to use it last summer. So today I took it apart, disconnected all the internal connectors and cleaned them with alcohol. It now seems to work just fine. I was really worried it was fried – $1300 saved!
Done at around 4:20 AM – EASILY THE BEST NIGHT IN A YEAR! Out of gas and knee is in some pain or I’d have gone until sunrise.
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