Starship Asterisk*

The Kitt Peak (KP) CONCAM2 was serviced about two months ago by Lior Shamir to replace the SBIG ST-8 (internal camera) with a better working one and upgrade the computer. Lior found an insect caught in the fan and removed it. He also installed a "sunset switch" that turns off electrical equipment during the day to avoid overheating. The KP CONCAM2 has run very well ever since. The Kitt Peak management does not have the funds to upgrade to a CONCAM3 at this time.

- rjn

The Kitt Peak CONCAM went down for an undetermined reason a few nights ago. Our KP site coordinator, Mike Hawes, has been alerted and emails us that the CONCAM computer appears to respond normally to being rebooted. We therefore expect normal operations to begin again tonight after the (new) sunset switch re-activates the system.
- RJN

The thing is that the computer boots itself every night. If the computer still works, then this shouldn't be the problem. I hope there is no network problem there.

For some strange reason KP is up again.

The Kitt Peak Concam has been down since January 26. Its last image is from that morning. Any idea when it might be back online?

Jim.

I just looked in on the KP station and it appears to still be offline, however the status is showing that it is on, and the minutes until sunrise countdown appears to be working. Still showing that Jan 26 image.

The high profile KP Concam has remained offline for 18 days now, any word on what has happened? Computer troubles?

The KP Concam appears to be having computer/network problems. On site personnel are currently collaborating with our NSL systems designer to get the camera running again. More information will be provided as it becomes available.

Vic Muzzin wrote:The KP Concam appears to be having computer/network problems. On site personnel are currently collaborating with our NSL systems designer to get the camera running again. More information will be provided as it becomes available.

Thanks for that update Vic, lets hope they get things straightened out without too much difficulty or cost. Incidentally the KP CONCAM is still down as of this posting.

I was wondering if you could answer a few questions, first, regarding one of the photometry stats. What is the final column (C5c-Bc) indicating?

Also, I tried viewing a few of the FITS images using Registax thinking they would contain more detail then the JPGs we see on the CONCAM pages, but I seem to be wrong in that presumption. Or is it that Registax is not a good FITS viewer? Any advice on a better program for viewing them for little or no money?

"C5" means the average of the brightest five pixels for a star.

"B" means an averaged level for the background light around a star.

"c" means the canonical averaged frame created by a weighted average over several previous frames taken on previous nights at the same sidereal time. At the same sidereal time, all of the star will appear in exactly the same positions, even if the Sun and Moon appear shifted. One can think of a "c" frame as taken when it is perfectly clear -- even more clear than the reality of any one frame. A new frame is only added to the "c" stack if it is relatively clear. Cloudly frames are completely ignored.

"C5c-Bc" is the expected counts, minus background, for this star. If the star has more counts than this, then perhaps the air is exceptionally transparent or the star has brightened. If the star has fewer counts than this, then perhaps the air is relatively opaque (cloud?) or perhaps the star is part of a binary system and in some sort of eclipe. More likely, small changes are just random statistical fluctuations. The "c" system is still not fully mature and sometimes the canonical "c" frame is not a good estimate of a truly clear frame.

The software to do find this automatically this was written by Lior Shamir.

- RJN

I don't know what Registax is, but I do understand that some taxes are good for the economy. FITS is a data standard for the astronomical community. Many popular image processors do not recognize it without a code patch, however. Canned FITS viewers are available by searching Google for "FITS". One good one is "FITSview".

- RJN

Dr. Nemiroff

I appreciate the definitions and have downloaded the FITS Viewer you mentioned.

Registax is a FREE software application that allows you to import multiple images from various sources such as CCD Cameras or Video Cameras. It then allows you to stack those images together to obtain a higher resolution final image which you can export in various formats like FITS.

Basically, instead of taking a single guided 60 min exposure you can take 30 or 10,000 2 min unguided exposures and stack them together to obtain your final image. This can help reduce noise and blooming effects often experienced with longer exposures. Plus if a few clouds rolled by you can just dump the bad frames and use only the good frames.

It works real well for stacking short exposure unguided video frames into a single image of geater detail. They have a new version out which I have also downloaded and you can read more about it at the following URL:

http://registax.astronomy.net/index.html

Looks like they have gotten off to a pretty good start on getting KP back up and running. There were several reasonably decent images early on where you could make out Orion, Saturn, a few clouds, the horizon and of course the Moon. But it looks like the intensity of the Moon is a bit too much. The last image just showing a very "Bloomed" Moon and no stars or horizon or other detail.

The KP CONCAM appears to be fully operational at this time.

Under mostly cloudy Moonlight skies the KP CONCAM appears to be operational. No Photometry files but I was thinking that may be due to the Moon?

Noctuas_Universe wrote:Under mostly cloudy Moonlight skies the KP CONCAM appears to be operational. No Photometry files but I was thinking that may be due to the Moon?

Definately, the moon is too bright for WOLF to even identify any stars. At least the photometry pages are being created even if there is no data to be listed on them. The RH Concam is not even generating pages to list any potential photometry data.

Kitt Peak (KP) CONCAM seems to have gotten stuck again and is displaying an image from 23Feb05 @ 13:04.

I would guess that the computer has crashed once again, it is possible it may have to come back to MTU for service.

Vic Muzzin wrote:I would guess that the computer has crashed once again, it is possible it may have to come back to MTU for service.

Anyword yet on the status of the computer and when they might be able to get KP up and running again?

Noctuas_Universe wrote: Anyword yet on the status of the computer and when they might be able to get KP up and running again?

It is still not exactly clear what is wrong with the computer. We are actively involved with the KP staff trying to troubleshoot the problem, we may end up having to send a new computer.

Just a brief note to indicate the KP Concam is still down, and displaying the image from 2Mar2005.

Kp appears to have come online about 2:25 UT on the 11th of March. Photometry available also.

The KP Concam appears offline at this time, displaying an image from March 13, 2005.

The KP Concam is still offline and displaying the image from March 13th.

Thanks Herb, I have sent an email to Mike Hawes, will let you know.