BSM-South status

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Thu, 12/02/2010 - 16:14

BSM-South is just about ready to go.  Peter, Chris and Rod have installed and polar aligned the equipment.  I've done bias and flat frames remotely (using VNC; fun accessing a telescope 10,000 miles away!).  Until Peter was called back to work last night, we were getting ready to test the system with a couple of pilot projects - two time series objects for Thom Gandet (where the longitude of BSM-South would remove the usual one-day aliasing signal) and some BVRI monitoring of U Men, an interesting semi-regular variable.

We'll be concentrating on observing standards, deriving transformation coefficients, measuring the pixel scale accurately, learning how to flat-field the system, and in general exercising everything we can.  Southeastern Australia is not a great photometric site, so it may be a few weeks before we formally announce BSM-South as ready to go and start accepting proposals.  We're getting close!

ARne