So we started the decommissioning of IMT3, dome and all ready for the move to a new darker site location. The new incarnation once installed will be known as IMT3b. As part of the process the Esprit120 will be relocated to a separate pier mount in a RoR shed to be known as IMT3c.
21:59 : 00:11
Decided to have a quick look out before moving house, given it was supposed to be cloudy and there is a bit of a clear spell. I have decided to just take a look at a few objects. First up is the Cheeseburger Nebula NGC 7026.
Next up is IC63 which is a ghost nebula that Tim imaged the other night, I want to see what it looks like in my 12″ vs his 10″. The first thing I noticed was in the guider window that the reflection of the bright star Gamma Cas caused an interesting image.
Next I am going to go after M110.
I have now slewed to M32 just below.
The last object of tonight and then off to bed so I can be up to help Bob concrete IMT4 tomorrow is NGC 508.
20:24 – 22:43
Imaging with GingerGeek for another exoplanet. This one starts its pre-transit at 23:55 and should just about be on the point at the meridian where we can perform a meridian flip and then image all night.
We like to make sure we have the right star field so actually having a photo from the exoclock website helps. Tonights candidate is the dimmer star to the left of this pair.
The star is a magnitude 10 star in Lacerta. Unfortunately despite the forecast it has just clouded over, here is what we would have been imaging.
So the evening started well, I had logged into IMT3, got the dome ready, TheSkyX/SGPro software was up and running, CMOS camera was cooled and I was already syncing on a bright star even though it was still twilight.
Dave and I had chatted the previous night and had settled on HAT-P-32b in the constellation of Andromeda. The reason was due to the target position in the sky, the time of rising and setting was before the rise of the sun so we could get a full ingress and egress and no meridian flip was required.
Then the gremlins started to play havoc with our efforts and I was having major issue with guiding to the point that I was going to give up as the issues were eating into the desired 1 hour egress monitoring time period. Dave joined the session to help resolve the issue and we managed to start imaging about 10 minutes before the start of the transit.
Dave had to go to bed due to work commitments but I was determined to get the full set of observation and run it through the HOPS analysis software. It was an uneventful night interspaced with music, movies and hot cups of tea.
Once I had transferred the data over the internet to my server, performed the analysis and sent the result to Dave it was 5:30am so I crawled into bed around 6am.
21:03 – 05:39
Bob, Dave and GingerGeek playing with the Tak 102 this evening and just image for 2 minutes on various targets.
Slewed to the Double Cluster first.
Focus position was 564 from the last time we used it a long time, it is now 578.
Took a 2 minute exposure
Slewed to M75 the Little Dumbell. Needed to take a 5 min exposure to see
Slewed to M34 Open Cluster.
Slewed to NGC 1023 a barred spiral galaxy. Took 5mins exposure at 22:12.
GingerGeek went off to bed whilst Dave and Bob continued.
Slewed to NGC 1260 a lenticular galaxy in Perseus.
Slewed to NGC 1545 an open cluster but it was behind the house.
Slewed to IC 1848 the Soul nebula.
Slewed to Heart nebula.
Slewed to IC 1831 an HII cloud.
Slewed to IC 1795 nebula.
We found at this point that some of the images were trailing at 2 minutes in the East so we started to use guiding.
Slewed to NGC 1245 open cluster. [not imaged]
Slewed to NGC 1220 open cluster. [not imaged]
Slewed to NGC 1528 open cluster at 23:37
Dave went off to bed whilst Bob continued.
Slewed to IC 1795 Nebula.
Slewed to IC 1831 Nebula.
Bob then slewed back to a number of the objects as they had trailed including, IC 1805 Heart Nebula, IC1848 Soul Nebula, IC 1260, NGC 1023 barred spiral, M34, M76, Double Cluster
Mars at 1:47am
Slewed to M31
Slewed to M52
Slewed to NGC 457
Slewed to IC 1590
Slewed to NGC 7789
Slewed to NGC 129
Slewed to NGC 225
Slewed to IC59
Slewed to IC83 [no image]
Bob completed imaging at 05:39am
Session period 19:00 – 01:18, transit start ~23:06 and end ~02:37
Before I move house, we are going to try and grab another exoplanet or two or possibly three…..we’ll see. Tonight whilst it is currently clear and due to cloud over by 1am, we will go for HAT-P-6b that is on alert from Exoclock.
The transit end time is after it is due to cloud over but we may be able to get the start of the transit and some useful data to possibly half way through. So I have opened the dome, started to cool the 12″ down and slewed to a magnitude 4.29 star in the vicinity of Andromeda called HIP 116631 also known as 17 Iota Andromedae in the Flamsteed catalogue so that I can slew and centre on the object when it gets dark.
I’ve now manually centred the star due to the brightness of the sky still and synced in The Sky X
I’m now waiting for a bit more darkness to perform the first focus run.
At 20:31 I performed a focus run on the mag 4.29 star with the red filter and got position 63007 @ HFR 5.2 and temperature at the focuser of 17.28℃.
I have performed another solve and sync as I had left the scope running for a while without guiding and the star had moved slightly.
I have now taken a quick 20 second exposure of the target to confirm it was the right star as per the star chart from the Exoclock website and it was.
I have started guiding on a nearby star with PHD2.
HAT-P-6b rising from the East as can be seen in TSX.
So here is a 2 minute exposure of the target. I tried 60 second but given I am running Gain 10 Offset 10 the maximum pixel count for the centre of the star was 1,648 out of 65k. So a 2 minute exposure produces 9,488 which is still low but I will continue on the low side for now. 1 hour before the transit is in about 45 minutes so I will wait then start gathering data.
So we’ve started and set to run for 5.5 hours, this means a a meridian flip in 4 hours time so I will need to stay up until 2am, perform the flip then head back to bed.
The clouds have started to roll in, however so far we have been lucky and our star and planet are just outside the bank of cloud …… but for how long?
So it finally clouded over around 1am although the data for the past 20 minutes is suspect, so I hope we at least have the first half of the transit.
