Starship Asterisk*

Posted: **Fri Jul 30, 2004 3:21 pm**

The Siding Spring (SD) CONCAM3 in eastern Australia continues to work great.

- RJN

Posted: **Wed Aug 11, 2004 5:35 pm**

Currently the transparent dome over the Siding Spring CONCAM is likely covered with dew. Not all CONCAMs have such domes. Still it is amazing that the software can still pick out some stars! - RJN

Posted: **Thu Feb 17, 2005 6:20 am**

The Siding Spring CONCAM appears to be malfunctioning, displaying an image from February 12, 2005.

Posted: **Fri Feb 18, 2005 3:43 pm**

Siding Spring seems to be working again, displaying current images.

Boldra

Posted: **Fri Feb 18, 2005 7:58 pm**

There seems to be a bug in the siding springs software.

At a guess I'd say someone is playing with it now, as the behaviour isn't consistent. Some images appear to be subtracted from older images, causing black "shadows" of where stars/planets used to be.

Boldra

Posted: **Fri Feb 18, 2005 9:16 pm**

Boldra wrote: Some images appear to be subtracted from older images, causing black "shadows" of where stars/planets used to be.

Looks sort of like an opacity map is superimposed over the regular image and not properly aligned.

Posted: **Sat Feb 19, 2005 5:01 am**

Boldra wrote:There seems to be a bug in the siding springs software.

At a guess I'd say someone is playing with it now, as the behaviour isn't consistent. Some images appear to be subtracted from older images, causing black "shadows" of where stars/planets used to be.

Boldra

The shadows do appear to be negatives of a previous image, I would guess at some computer processing error, I would not be surprised if the images return to normal once the camera restarts, we shall see...

Posted: **Sun Feb 20, 2005 11:17 pm**

I can't see any recurrance of the "history subtraction" problem since the 18th. It looks like the problem has been solved and Siding Spring is working fine. Good work.

Boldra

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2005 8:16 am**

All going well for the past week, except for a couple of images with a lot of noise on them.

It looks like a camera hardware problem to me. I don't think this is a serious problem itself, but it just may turn out to be an indicator of impending failure.

Sunday 27th:
http://nightskylive.net/sd/sd050227/sd0 ... 03048a.jpg
http://nightskylive.net/sd/sd050227/sd0 ... 02653a.jpg
http://nightskylive.net/sd/sd050227/sd0 ... 02256a.jpg

Saturday 26th:
http://nightskylive.net/sd/sd050226/sd0 ... 95917a.jpg
http://nightskylive.net/sd/sd050226/sd0 ... 95521a.jpg

Monday 21st:
http://nightskylive.net/sd/sd050221/sd0 ... 94726a.jpg
http://nightskylive.net/sd/sd050221/sd0 ... 94330a.jpg

I'll keep an eye on it and keep you informed.

Boldra

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2005 4:29 pm**

Thanks, Boldra. That is a known software problem. Here is what causes it: A dark frame is taken every eighth frame. Some people reading this might not know what a dark frame is so please do not be insulted if I over-explain. A dark frame is taken with the shutter closed to see how illuminated the pixels are even when there is no light. The resulting "counts" are created by residual or "dark" current still in the system. The idea is to subtract the dark frame from the light (exposed) frame to get a better light frame.

Now CONCAMs try to take exposures of only two durations: 180 seconds when the moon is down and 20 seconds when the moon is up. If you take a 20 second exposure and subtract a 180 second dark frame, though, you get the type of frame you are reporting. We could make the software more sophisticated to avoid this, but one of our mottos is "don't spend 90% of time getting 10% more images", so we just let it go for now.

Thanks very much for your work and for picking this up!

- RJN

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2005 9:23 pm**

Thanks for the explanation - maybe we should cross-post it?

Usually I don't read the threads about status of other cameras, and I assume people spotting other cameras don't read this thread. I still think one thread for all spotting wouldn't be a bad idea... Otherwise, an extra thread for general spotting topics.

Boldra

Posted: **Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:08 am**

The SD Concam appears to be inop, still displaying an image from 1Mar2005.

Boldra wrote:Usually I don't read the threads about status of other cameras, and I assume people spotting other cameras don't read this thread. I still think one thread for all spotting wouldn't be a bad idea... Otherwise, an extra thread for general spotting topics.

Boldra, I look in on all the other status pages whenever there are new posts or updates. I usually do this after, or while looking at the associated Concam.

I think if we had all status reports in one thread it would be harder to keep up with all the posts, and if you wanted to see info for a particular Concam you would have to wade through all the others to try and find new data for the one your looking for.

We could just use the "Overall status of network 2/19/2005" Thread for general status, and spotting topics. It can be found here: http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=426 but that is Vic's thread and I guess he would have to authorize that.

Or how about using the "CONCAM issues" Thread created by Emoticon found here: http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=195 but I guess he would have to authorize that.

Just a thought.

Posted: **Wed Mar 09, 2005 12:09 pm**

Siding Spring came back up late on the 7th and has been ok for two days now. Good pictures too.

Boldra

Posted: **Fri Mar 11, 2005 8:40 am**

SD Concam appears offline, last image returned was March 9th. 2005 @ 13:55UTC.

Posted: **Sun Mar 20, 2005 5:46 pm**

Siding Spring seems to be working again. It came online about midnight Saturday night (19/3), and something big and black was visible on the horizon.

It's almost Monday morning local time (21/3)now. The black beast hasn't been back, and the pictures have been good.

Noctuas - please don't look! Every time you look it goes offline!

Boldra

Posted: **Mon Mar 28, 2005 8:42 pm**

Siding Spring has been ok for the past week, producing lots of pictures of the moon.
There's been a couple of recurrences of the "history subtraction" bug, (http://nightskylive.net/sd/sd050328/sd0 ... 81210a.jpg, http://nightskylive.net/sd/sd050325/sd0 ... 41135a.jpg), but only in short bursts.

There were some nice exposures of the milky way from moonrise and moonset, eg: http://nightskylive.net/sd/sd050321/sd0 ... 54613a.jpg.

No reappearance of "the beast"

Boldra

Posted: **Mon Mar 28, 2005 9:32 pm**

Boldra wrote:Noctuas - please don't look! Every time you look it goes offline! ,..

Boldra wrote:Siding Spring has been ok for the past week,..

Oops ... Sorry I just looked. Hope I didn't jinx it again

But I did see that the last four images seem messed up though. Looks similar to the images from Hawaii after the sun fried the chip. Hope that didn't happen to SP.

P.S. It was messed up before I got there!

Posted: **Tue Mar 29, 2005 5:41 pm**

Yes, yesterday it worked, today it's broken.

The camera failed to switch on today (29th). It's now showing the last pic from 28/3/5, which is munged:

As I mentioned yesterday, it's not the only case of this kind of munging. There were some munged pictures in the middle of the night on the 25th (

), and it seemed to recover by itself.

The problem is similar, but maybe not identical, to the "history subtraction" problem that existed on the 18/2/5:

. That problem resolved itself the next day.

I've also noticed that in some cases there is even photometry after the munging - this could indicate that the original pictures were ok when then went into WOLF, but got munged before they hit the web.

Boldra

Posted: **Wed Mar 30, 2005 2:57 am**

Noctuas_Universe wrote:
Boldra wrote:Noctuas - please don't look! Every time you look it goes offline! ,..

Boldra wrote:Siding Spring has been ok for the past week,..

Oops ... Sorry I just looked. Hope I didn't jinx it again

But I did see that the last four images seem messed up though. Looks similar to the images from Hawaii after the sun fried the chip. Hope that didn't happen to SP.

P.S. It was messed up before I got there!

Noctuas, were you looking at RH on the 23rd? For shame! There was lightning and explosions and such! Knock it off!

Posted: **Thu Mar 31, 2005 12:44 pm**

Andre tells me they are expeiriencing computer troubles. Apparently their computer is a major slacker and is fond of taking unauthorized naps (bad computer!) Our system experts are on the case and hopefully will be able to bring about an expedient resolution of the problem.

Posted: **Mon Apr 11, 2005 11:16 am**

Up and down again a lot last week. Currently down.

Boldra

Posted: **Sat May 07, 2005 11:29 am**

The Siding Spring camera has been displaying the "temporarily down for maintainence" message for ages now.... and it shows the last capture of the 13 march... any idea on what is going on and how long it will take to fix?

Posted: **Thu May 12, 2005 5:27 pm**

scisaacsmop wrote:The Siding Spring camera has been displaying the "temporarily down for maintainence" message for ages now.... and it shows the last capture of the 13 march... any idea on what is going on and how long it will take to fix?

Matt Merlo wrote:Right now all the CONCAM 3's are down to fix some software problems. As soon as this is fixed, the CONCAMs will be back online. According to the original timetable, they won't be back up until after the next full moon

Starship Asterisk*

Siding Spring (SD) CONCAM status

Siding Spring (SD) CONCAM status

17Feb05 (SD) CONCAM Status

working again

Siding Springs thumbs up

SD Going well

dark frames

Re: dark frames

Siding Springs back up

SD Status: Offline

Siding Spring working again

status 20-28 March 2005

Re: status 20-28 March 2005

jinxed by Noctuas again

Re: status 20-28 March 2005

up and down

Sat 7 May---cam still shows march 13

Re: Sat 7 May---cam still shows march 13