quarta-feira, 29 de junho de 2011

Delta Scorpii 2011 - Day 1 - A long day's night

After the preparations and after finding out that the focus of the auto guiding camera could not be achieved, we decided to continue under manual guiding.
Also, all the extensions between the adapter and the spectrograph were removed and the spectroscope was attached directly to the accessories box.

With all the tests and attempts to find the solution for the auto guiding, part of the night was past and the time for Delta Scorpii was limited.
When the telescope is tracking any object, the computer provides information of the time limit for that object, due to the telescope limits.
The intention is to capture spectra in Halfa and in HeliumII, what means two series of captures, but there was time for one domain.
So we only captured the spectra in Halfa.
But there was time for two of our secondary targets: - 66 Ophiuchi and Pi Aquarii.
66 Ophiuchi lost its disk and Pi Aquarii had lost it 30 years ago, but is showing signals of having a not very important one again.
The night ended by 05:00 AM.
The flats and darks related with these captures shall be obtained the 29th afternoon, past 18:00 hours.
The decision now is to continue the mission with manual guiding.
The sky is clear of clouds but there is the locally called "calima" which limits the visibility, mainly at low altitude.
The "calima" is a kind of haze mostly caused by powders in the atmosphere, carried from the Sahara desert by the winds.
If the visibility is reduced, the seeing is better when the "calima" is around.

The next night, if there are no technical problems, we hope to obtain spectra of Delta Scorpii, in Halpha and Helium II and again of two secondary stars.

Alberto

Sem comentários:

Enviar um comentário