Objects

Session Notes

PGC 100170 - Galaxy (Dwingeloo 1)     Photometric Monitoring - Variables - U And, CI Cyg, S Cyg, SS Cyg, BL Lac, RU Peg, DY Per, GK Per, FG Sge, V Sge RU Peg attempts (failed due to cloud/poor sky transparency)     Astrometric Monitoring - Nearby Stars - None

- Evening session (2.4 hr). Very cold (minimum temperature -8°C) Cloud at times.  Caught out by snow shower whilst acquiring Dark Frames.  1/4" layer of snow over everything in observatory, requiring unexpected sweeping and brushing effort to clear, Autostar II/LX200 performing normally, unlike previous session (S405) when autostar started to repeatedly fail after freezing fog exposure. Unexplained erroneous jog after taking second locate image for BL Lac where a west Jog of 0.49 arc min resulted in scope movement of 28 arc min. - Session operated under semi-automated control - Ambient Temperature:  Minimum -8.0°C rising to -5°C by end of session - CCD operation -30°C (at 50% average cooling).   - main objectives of the session was to acquire images of key selected stars for ongoing photometric and astrometric analysis, acquire set of Darks at -30°C. - secondary objective was to acquire images of a few Local Group and other nearby Galaxies.  Poor sky transparency unfortunately prevented getting any good images . -