Research Report – April 2nd

Astronomy Report
Name: Ignacio Sánchez Casla
Crew: 227

Sky Conditions: Sunny in the morning, cloudy in the afternoon
Wind Conditions: No wind

MUSK SOLAR OBSERVATORY
Observation Start Time: None
Observation End Time: None

Summary: Went on EVA in the morning and it was cloudy the whole afternoon.

Objects Viewed: None

Problems Encountered: None

MDRS ROBOTIC OBSERVATORY

Robotic Telescope Requested: MDRS-14

Objects to be imaged this evening:
– Messier 51
– Messier 64
– Messier 57
– Messier 101
– NGC 7023

Same objects as yesterday since every image but one failed.

Images submitted with this report:
– the only image that did not fail
– one of the images that failed, hopefully, you can notice something I am doing wrong…

Errors Encountered:

I still get the WCS Registration failed error even though the sky was supposed to be clear yesterday night.

The only image that didn’t fail was the last one that was taken. It is attached to this report.

Here are the parameters that I use. Am I doing something wrong?

Filter Length:
LoThru 60 s
GenR 30 s
GenG 60 s
GenB 120 s

I noticed yesterday night that the first images were taken at about 11 pm. Maybe it’s a bit early? Should I manually delay the observations until the objects are at maximum height in the sky?

Any suggestion is welcome.

Astronomy Report – April 1st

Astronomy Report
Name: Ignacio Sánchez Casla
Crew: 227

Sky Conditions: Sunny
Wind Conditions: No wind

MUSK SOLAR OBSERVATORY
Observation Start Time: 9:30 and 14:15
Observation End Time: 12:00 and 16:00

Summary:
Today I finally was able to observe the sun with the solar observatory! I observed the sun for a bit this morning and went after lunch too. Everything went smoothly and no problems were encountered with the lower shutter, although a bit of cleaning and lubrication can certainly help.

I sent you the image of the Sun I took this evening. With a nice prominence. My photoshop skills can certainly be improved but I’m quite proud of my first image anyway.

Objects Viewed: Sun

Problems Encountered: None

MDRS ROBOTIC OBSERVATORY

Robotic Telescope Requested: MDRS-14

Objects to be imaged this evening:
– Messier 51
– Messier 64
– Messier 57
– Messier 101
– NGC 7023
I saw that we will have a clear sky this evening so I will observe a lot of objects.

Images submitted with this report: None since yesterday’s observations came back with "WCS Registration failed" error.

Errors Encountered: WCS Registration failed -> probably due to bad weather over the observatory. Hopefully this evening will be nice.

Astronomy Report March 29th

Crew 227 Astronomer Report 29th March 2022
SOL: 2

Name of person filing report: Ignacio Sanchez

Sky Conditions: Cloudy and rainy
Wind Conditions: No wind but hard to tell since we didn’t went on EVA

Observation Start Time: None
Observation End Time: None

Summary: Today was another uneventful day telescope-wise. The clouds obstructed the Sun all day and the observations set for the MDRS-14 were not taken and are still shown as active. Maybe Skynet reports them because of the bad weather?
Please find attached the remaining photo. Let me know if you need any other photos.
I wanted to at least go through the opening and closing procedure of the Musk Solar Observatory but due to the rain, I cancelled the plan.

Objects Viewed: None

Problems Encountered: None

Research Report – March 30th

Astronomy Report – Sol 3
Name: Ignacio Sánchez Casla
Crew: 227

Sky Conditions: Lightly clouded
Wind Conditions:

Observation Start Time: None
Observation End Time: None

Summary: Observations set for the MDRS-14 were not taken and are still shown as active. Maybe Skynet reports them because of the bad weather? Hopefully, they will be taken tonight.
What is the status of the MDRS-WF?

The solar observatory was not used today due to a mistake I made when planning my day yesterday. Sorry for that.

Objects Viewed: None

Problems Encountered: None

Astronomy Report – March 11th

Name: Marine Prunier

Crew: 263
Date: 08 Mars 2022

MDRS ROBOTIC OBSERVATORY

Robotic Telescope Requested (choose one): MLC-RCOS16

Objects to be Imaged this Evening: M51, LDN 1627

Images submitted with this report: /

Problems Encountered: /

MUSK OBSERVATORY

Solar Features Observed: 5 sunspots

Images submitted with this report: Sun 220311 sunspot 1

Sun 220311 sunspot 2

Problems Encountered: /

Research Report – March 9th

Name: Marine Prunier
Crew: 263
Date: 09 Mars 2022

MDRS ROBOTIC OBSERVATORY

Robotic Telescope Requested (choose one): MLC-RCOS16

Objects to be Imaged this Evening: None (New Mexico observatory closed for wind)

Images submitted with this report: /

Problems Encountered: The observations of LDN 1627 and M51 submitted yesterday on Skynet (8 Mars) were really blurry, a warning sign was displayed next to every observation file. The wind was less than a few Mph yesterday according to www.nmskies.com, I wonder what the issue was. When seeing that the first pictures were not very good, I canceled the rest of the observations (not to waste too many Skynet credits).

MUSK OBSERVATORY

Solar Features Observed: /
Images submitted with this report: /
Problems Encountered: /

Astronomy Report March 8th

Name: Marine Prunier

Crew: 263
Date: 08 Mars 2022

MDRS ROBOTIC OBSERVATORY

Robotic Telescope Requested (choose one): MLC-RCOS16

Objects to be Imaged this Evening: LDN 1627, M51

Images submitted with this report: /

Problems Encountered: LDN 1627 observation was cancelled on Skynet, M51 observations were taken but most of the pictures are blurry and some of them are not pointed on M51.

MUSK OBSERVATORY

Solar Features Observed: /

Images submitted with this report: /

Problems Encountered: /

Astronomy Report – February 27th

Good evening Peter,

Thank you for the precisions concerning the calibration. I will try to use the filters in Photoshop.

Concerning the exoplanet work, on the night from the 26 to 27 of February was an observable transit of TOI 959.01 (from the Tess catalogue) from 2:20 to 6:40 (UTC). The transit depth is supposed to be about 30 ppt. I retraced the light curve of the star during the transit using multi-aperture photometry in AstroImageJ. I was not able to see a transit curve, as you can observe in the attached graph. The curve of TOI has the same trend as the comparison stars (to obtain this graph I had to process the photometry with the 8 first images separately from the following 12 images because the star were displaced in the second part of the image set, the gap you can notice comes from this processing issue).
I don’t know if the predicted transit was wrong, or if the images are too noisy to measure the transit properly (although 30 ppt is quite a big transit depth).

The next transit to image for TOI 959.01 will occur in the night of 3rd March. I hope this night we will have a clear sky. Do you think I need a longer exposure time, or shall I try with the same (80 sec)?

For the Musk Observatory, tomorrow the crew engineer and I will check the screw and see what we can do, I will keep you updated!

I saw in Skynet that the weather at Montana Learning Center will be cloudy tonight, therefore I will not submit any observations today.

Wishing you a nice Sunday evening,

Marine

Research Report – February 26th

Name: Marine Prunier
Crew: 263
Date: 26 Feb 2022

MDRS ROBOTIC OBSERVATORY

Robotic Telescope Requested (choose one): MLC-RCOS16

Objects to be Imaged this Evening: TOI 959.01 (Tess exoplanet catalog)

Images submitted with this report: Horsehead Nebula

Problems Encountered: /

MUSK OBSERVATORY

Solar Features Observed: /

Images submitted with this report: /

Problems Encountered: /

Astronomy Report – February 25th

Name: Marine Prunier

Crew: 263
Date: 25 Feb 2022

MDRS ROBOTIC OBSERVATORY

Robotic Telescope Requested (choose one): MLC-RCOS16

Objects to be Imaged this Evening: None

Images submitted with this report: M81

Problems Encountered: /

MUSK OBSERVATORY

Solar Features Observed: /

Images submitted with this report: /

Problems Encountered: The second part of the dome is not opening anymore. Yesterday the whole dome was perfectly functioning.

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