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2014_07_1718

2014-07-18 By SleepIsWrong Leave a Comment

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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