AAVSOnet status, 2015-10-12

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Mon, 10/12/2015 - 12:54

BSM South remains down, as the site manager is on travel.

BSM Berry will be down for the next week or so, as the site manager is on travel.

BSM HQ is down for a few days.  I want to replace the dovetail to better balance the telescope, and add some cork to the mounting rings to keep the telescope from slipping.  If I have a chance, I'll also polar-align the telescope.  These things won't happen until the end of the week or next weekend, depending on when the replacement dovetail arrives.

BSM NM is down, waiting for mount repair.  A replacement board has been ordered, kindly donated by Bill Stein.

BSM Hamren is running, though only looking at the western sky.

coker30 is up and running.

SRO is up and running, though with poor weather.  I will be updating its queues next week to remove older targets.

TMO61 is back up, though the weather pattern has been poor.  It is having communication problems between hardware components, though, and so is unlikely to keep running all night.

OC61 is down with a focuser problem.  The site manager is going to fix this after the mirror realuminization which occurs this coming week.  So expect OC61 to be down for about 1-2 more weeks.

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Difficulties of automation

[quote=HQA]

BSM Hamren is running, though only looking at the western sky.

[/quote]

In case some may wonder why this is so... I had BSM-Hamren running up on my house roof last year, in a simple inexpensive enclosure. The "severe" wet weather here in windward Hawaii Island, basically rotted the wood away, forcing the system to be temporarily moved down to the front of the house, pending decisions on how to better locate it. It is running partially under the roof overhang, to protect from the predominant easterly winds, which limits the view to the W only. Nevertheless, it works pretty well like this! In fact, not having to do numerous GEM flips all the time might be beneficial for the mount ;)

Mike