Astronomy Report – January 1st – Mars Desert Research Station

[category

astronomy-report]

Name: Gabriel Skowronek
Crew: 289
Date: 01 Jan 2024

MONTANA LEARNING CENTER
Robotic Telescope Requested RCOS-16
Objects to be Imaged this Evening: SW Tauri
Images submitted with this report: None
Problems Encountered: None

MDRS ROBOTIC OBSERVATORY
Robotic Telescope Requested MDRS-WF
Objects to be Imaged this Evening: M1 (Crab Nebula), M42 (Orion Nebula)
Images submitted with this report: None
Problems Encountered: Neither M1 nor M42 have been imagined. Furthermore, I wanted to process the M1 images I currently have for the practice, despite them being overexposed. However, there doesn’t seem to be any flat or dark calibration images taken. Is this problematic? If so, how should I set up an observation to make sure that they are there?

MUSK OBSERVATORY
Solar Features Observed: N/A
Images submitted with this report: N/A
Problems Encountered: N/A
Additional Notes: I was able to get reasonable estimates for the magnitudes of my images of SW Tau using Afterglow (between 9.3 and 10.4). However, I just wanted to get numbers from AstroImageJ for comparison but am having trouble in choosing the aperture sizes. I noticed that magnitude is variable depending on the size of the aperture I choose and am not sure how to go about choosing the radius of object aperture and inner/outer radius of background annulus? The video tutorials seem to show that there is an ‘Auto’ option for this which is not available on my end.

MDRS Field Season #22 (2022-23)

Oct 1-16— Work Party

(Oct 20-23—TMS Conference in Tempe Arizona)

Oct 24-28—Crew 266-- Spaceward Bound High School

Oct 30—Nov 12—Crew 267—WOMARS

Nov 13—26—Crew 268-- Mars Society All women crew

Nov 27—Dec 10— Crew 269--The Aerospace Corporation Team

Dec 11—17 (one week) —Crew 270 -- NASA Spaceward Bound Utah Cohort 4

Dec 18— 31—Crew 271— Mars Society crew

Jan 1—14, 2023— Crew 272-- Purdue

Jan 15—28— Crew 273— Spanish Language Crew

Jan 29--Feb 11—Crew 274— APUS ARG-1M

Feb 12—Mar 11-- Crew 275— Supaero

Mar 12—18 — No Crew (Spring Break)

Mar 19-25 (one week) — Crew 277— Class

Mar 26—Apr 1 (one week) — Crew 278— Class

Apr 2—15— Crew 279— M.A.R.S. UC Louvain

Apr 16—29—Crew 280— Hypatia

Apr 30—May 13—Crew 261— Transatlantic Mars Society

May 14—27— Crew 281— Project Possum Alumni

June 1—3— University Rover Challenge

June 4-10 (one week)— Crew 282— Martian Biology III

June 11-17 - Summer Closeout Crew

About The MDRS

The Mars Desert Research Station in the Utah desert was established by the Mars Society in 2001 to better educate researchers, students and the general public about how humans can survive on the Red Planet. It is the second Mars analogue habitat after the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station was established in 2000.

Over 200 crews of six-person teams have lived in 1-2 week field visits at MDRS to simulate life on the Martian surface. Researchers and students alike have explored the Mars-like terrain in the area surrounding the station in full “spacesuits”, maintained the station’s systems, grown plants in the GreenHab to support themselves and even recycled their waste water.

Our activities at MDRS are not only about informing the public, but also conducting real research to bring humanity that much closer to the reality of human exploration on the planet Mars.

Annual field seasons at MDRS run approx. October through May. Anybody can apply to be on a crew, and we also need volunteers to help with the project.

Management Team

Mission Support

Astronomy Report – January 1st

Like this:

Related

Share this:

Like this:

Related