Eye on the Sky - End of Monsoon Season, Knowing the Weather, File Transfer & Support Update, and more!


Eye on the Sky: The End of Monsoon Season

One of the first things I learned about Astronomy was that regardless of how well you may plan and prepare, the weather will always control if you are looking up tonight.  


As we approach the end of Monsoon Season in New Mexico, a wet summer in Spain, and one of the worst winters on record at Siding Spring in Australia, we are happy to be able to start looking up once again! 

July and August have traditionally been our poorest viewing months here at iTelescope, but the sky tends to clear mid September, usually leading to three months straight of fantastic weather!  Over the next few weeks, the clouds and rain will move away from New Mexico, the winter storms will move away from Australia (this has already begun!)  and clear skies of Spring (SSO) and Fall (NMS/Spain) will begin!

With this in mind, we wanted to give you a quick idea of how you can keep an eye on the sky using our weather services!



Feature Focus:  Knowing the Weather


 

One of the hardest things about remote astronomy is imaging around the weather.  When you use a telescope from your home, you can see what the weather is like by simply walking outside.  However, when your using a remote telescope thousands of kilometers away, you have no good source of information on the weather.  This is why we have our weather pages for each observatory site available 24 hours a day. 


Each page offers a unique look at the most up to date weather information at that location.  They also include things like All Sky Cameras, Observatory Web Cameras, Cloud Watcher and measurement of all things to do with the weather.  In the video below, we will detail what each of our on screen weather monitors keep track of, as well as how to use them to improve your imaging!
 

 


New Systems Update

Last month, we talked about iTelescope: Sierra Remote Observatory (SRO) and it's first resident, Telescope 24, and wanted to give a quick update on the progress of this project.  

We are working closely with Planewave as they complete construction of the OTA for Telescope 24.  We have also begun shipping parts from Australia and the U.S.A to Sierra Remote for this system.  We are anticipating installation in October, but as always, these things can change as some delays are inevitable.  

We will be updating you with the progress on our main web page, as well as in our newsletter. We cannot wait to fully unveil this amazing system!



Upcoming PA Change:  T20 and T12

Within the next month, Telescope 20 will be reinstalled as a clone of T12 and T14, two of the most used systems on the network.  In order to properly facilitate this project, we are going to be adjusting the PA of both T20 and T12 in order to match the PA of Telescope 14.  

This will match all three systems at a PA of 89.5º, ensuring that members can use any of these systems and obtain similar results.

We do want to ensure that we do not interrupt your current projects on T12 with this change, so if you have an outstanding project to finish, please contact us and let us know an estimate on how long it will take for you to complete your project on T12.  We anticipate this change to take place within the month, so please contact us as soon as possible.



New Data Transfer Service
 

Due to the recent problems with the internal transfer software responsible for moving files from the telescope to the FTP server, we have changed the software we use.

For the most part, this is a change that will have very little impact on our members with a few, key exceptions:

1)  Due to the nature of the new software, we have had to adjust the directory name for each telescope on the FTP.  Beginning 15th of September 2013, all files will now be placed into a telescope directory that follows a new format on the FTP.  Instead of the directory being labelled as Telescope-##, it will now be labeled as T## for each system.  This change will not be retroactive.

This means that images taken before September 15 on T18 will still be located in the Telescope-18 directory.  Directories using this old format will remain active until the FTP purges them (typically 120 days from the date the image was taken).

If you took an image after September 15 on T18, it will be located in the new directory, T18, on the FTP.

If you find you are missing a file, please look for these new directories on the FTP.

2)  With this change in software, it has now become viable again to zip all files before they are transferred to the FTP.  Beginning September 15, 2013, all files will once again be zipped when being transferred to the FTP server.  This will drastically increase the speed at which images are transferred off of the telescopes, especially for images coming out of our Spain telescopes, with images taking nearly 1/8 of the previous time.  

Before our recent FTP changes, we would zip all files through ACP, which would slow imaging runs by up to 15 seconds per image.  We have moved the zipping process to the new software, so it will be done in the background while imaging continues, having no affect on ACP or imaging time.

3)  With this new system we are going to change the format in which the file names are created.  They will follow the exact same pattern as before (IE: calibrated-telescope name-user name-target name-date-image number-filter-bin-direction-time-image count), however, all parts of this file will now be in lower case, and no longer case sensitive.  This means that if you often use Upper and Lower case letters to distinguish between runs on the same target, you will no longer be able to tell the runs apart via capitalization.

Examples of this:

Old Files would appear like:  Calibrated-T4-ajenkins-M42-20130905-040719-Luminance-BIN1-W-300-001.fit

New Files will appear like:  calibrated-t4-ajenkins-m42-20130905-040719-luminance-bin1-w-300-001-zip

This difference is minor, but we wanted to make you aware of it. 

This new software should drastically improve the consistency of our image transfers, resulting in the timely transfer of your data to the FTP.

As always, if you have any questions or if you notice any problems with the new system, please let us know by creating a support ticket.

Thank You,

Aron Jenkins
General Manager
iTelescope.Net



Support Update

As an effort to further increase our ability to assist you quickly we are going to be changing our support provider to one that better fits iTelescope.Net.

This should have very little impact on members, but you will notice a slightly different layout for ticket replies and the support web site, as well as some new features in the upcoming months.  

Please keep an eye on future newsletters for updates.


Q3 Grant Program Update

Our grant program continues to go well with an outstanding record of at least one science paper produced per grant.

This quarter we have a number of activities underway:
 
Mariinskaya High School in Odessa Ukraine - Variable star survey
Dr Loke in Malaysia - Researching Robotic Astronomy as an activity for people with age-related disability
Blake Planetarium - Milky Way photography project
Junior chapter of the Astronomy Society of Victoria - capturing an exo-planet light curve


 
Whilst a number of these are just getting started, Mariinskaya High School have identified 7 new Variable Stars and are in the final stages of putting the finishing touches on the light curves are preparing reports for the VSX catalogue of the AAVSO.
 
We take a lot of things for granted in Australia with our education system, in Ukraine its a very different process and Maxim Mogoryan in particular has worked very hard to "maximize" his chances of entry to a great University next year by doing some great research.
 
Maxim has graciously allowed us to give you a "sneak peek" of his work which has been ably mentored by Natalia Virnina.
 
We love the science method here:
1) get on the telescope with the widest field of view
2) simplify the process by going to the same patch of sky every night
3) see whats out there
4) reduce and report data
 
Apparently what is out there is a lot! Two EW type binaries, two partial contact eclipsing binaries, one pulsating variable star and two that need more study as they are pretty interesting indeed. 

We are very excited that Maxim, Nadya and Natalia have done such an amazing job. We wish them all the best.



OSIRIS-REx Target Asteroids! Update

Citizen Science is a core part of what we do here at iTelescope. Our partnership with the OSIRIS-REx Target Asteroids Mission this year has been one of our big highlights of the year so far.

The Siding Spring Telescopes have been doing some outstanding work with astrometric positions reported to the Minor Planet center since opening have 93% of the reports at sub 1arcsec residual RMS. That is outstanding precision!
 

 
There have been a number of asteroid provisional designations from Q62 in the past month, interestingly a number of these were from additional detection whilst following OSIRIS-REx Target Asteroids Targets.
 
Peter Lake was following 2010 AF30 as it was at -38 Degrees Declination and not reachable by northern hemisphere telescopes. Over the course of a couple of nights gathering data for its lightcurve, it flew past new detections -  2013 PJ40 and 2013 PL69. Then following up 2013 PJ40 led to the further discovery of 2013 RG24, all pretty unremarkable main belt asteroids. 

There seems to be a bit of a coverage gap now with Panstarrs only surveying to -30 degrees, and E12 now sadly finishing up. 2013 PL69 has subsequently been pre-covered in E12s July data.

So for the asteroid hunters the Siding Spring Observatory is producing amazing results.



Member Showcase

Last month, we asked you to start imaging and post those images on Facebook and you responded!  

This month we would like to feature four fantastic images, including one from our very own imaging specialist, Jeff Woods!

Jeff has worked long and hard on this image of the Rho Ophiuchus Region and I have had the privilege of watching him work through the panels, one by one over the past bit.  The end result is one of the most fantastic images I have seen to date, and a real tribute to Jeff's skill and hard work.  I am happy to present this four panel mosaic of the Rho Ophiuchus Region taken on T14.

This is Rho Ophiuchus, a complex of different types of nebulae near Antares (the bright yellow star). The blue reflection nebula contrasts nicely with the dark nebulae threads in the upper right, and the emission nebulae in reds. Two globular star clusters are conveniently located in the field of view. Only 400 light years away, this is one of the closest star-forming regions to old Sol.


The second image we want to highlight comes from long time favorite, Noboru Yamamoto.  This gorgeous two panel mosaic of the Veil Nebula is presented in the Hubble Pallete, and really shows how much data can be pulled out of images from T14.
 

This two panel mosaic is another masterful piece of work by Noboru Yamamoto.  The Veil Nebula in the constellation of Cygnus is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust and was discovered by William Herschel in 1784.  This image consists of 24 x 5min of SII (2x2), 16 x 5min of Ha (1x1), and 16 x 5min of OIII (2x2) combined with MaxIm, CCDStack, PixInsight and Photoshop CS5.


The next image we would like to share is from an iTelescope newcomer, Roberto Colombari.  Roberto has been a member since August and is already producing amazing images!  Today we would like to share his APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) winning M45 taken on T14.
 


Messier 45, also known as the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, is open cluster in the constellation of Taurus.  It was discovered "officially" discovered in 1771 by Charles Messier, but was mentioned in ancient Greek and Babylonian texts as far back as 23rd century BC.  This amazing image was taken on T14 using 2 x 300s L, 1 x 300s of R and B for a total of only 20 minutes of exposure.



Finally, we take a look at the Great Orion Nebula and it's surrounding dusts as imaged on T12 by Federico Pelliccia.  This image is presented with amazing detail and a very pleasant adjustment from most images of M42 and it's surrounding features.  
 

The Great Orion Nebula is one of the brightest and most well known features of the night sky.  It is located 1,344 ± 20 light years away and is the closest region of massive star formation to our home planet.  This fantastic image departs from the traditional images of M42 by capturing the immensity of the surrounding gas around M42 and focuses heavily on the Ha component of the feature.  It was captured on T12 with 3 x 600s, 2 x 120s, 1 x 60s, 3 x 30s, and 3 x15s of Ha, 3 x 300s, 2 x 120s, 1 x 60s, 3 x 30s, and 3 x 15s of Luminance, and 3 x 300s (2x2), 2 x 120s, 1 x 60s, 3 x 30s, and 3 x 15s of R, G, and B.  
 
We hoped you enjoyed these fantastic images taken on iTelescopes.  If you would like to see more of our Member Showcase winners, please take a look at our Member Showcase Image Gallery!


Next Month's Showcase

Each month we hold a contest to show off our members amazing images!  To take part in the contest, all you need to do is post your image on our Facebook page or join the iTelescope.Net Member's Club, our Member's Only Facebook Group, and post there.  Please include which telescope, the number of exposures, filters used during exposures, how long each exposure lasted and the tools used to process the image.  The deadline for submissions is 30th of October, 2013.

iTelescope Staff will then pick winners from submissions between the 1st of September and 30th of October and showcase them in the next newsletter.  The winning submission will be awarded 100 iTelescope Points and have their image highlighted on our web page and newsletter.  Backup winners will be chosen if the winners do not claim their prize when notified by email from aron@itelescope.net.
 
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