It has been a while since the status was last updated - sorry!
The main thrust over the last few months has been in moving the calibration pipeline to the Amazon Cloud. Headquarters is moving in June into much smaller quarters, but the AAVSOnet servers did not fit well in the reduced space. The AAVSO Board agreed to fund ongoing AWS costs for the AAVSOnet processing. Cliff Kotnick has taken the lead role in this move, and has followed closely his proposed schedule and testing of the process. Right now, all AAVSOnet processing is being done in the Cloud, transparent to users. The archival images still reside on the original servers, and are next to move.
Processing on AWS has some advantages. The processing is scalable - if we find that things are too slow, we can increase the CPU speed easily; if we need more space, we can get more easily (but at a cost!). The upload and download speeds are much faster. We don't have to worry about equipment failures. We don't need someone to physically go to HQ for maintaining the servers or doing backups.
The remaining IT tasks have been in adding new cameras, improving the access to MPO61, improving some of the background quality control, and in transferring archival images to volunteers for analysis. Ken has been adding and updating plans for researchers; George continues his role of maintaining the SVN archive of software and plans; Arne works on hardware and archival images.
Speaking of MPO61: the Madrona Peak Observatory 24-inch RCOS is the newest AAVSOnet site. Located in the Hill Country west of Austin, TX, this wonderful observatory is part of AAVSOnet, courtesy of its management team, consisting of Walt Cooney, Bill Flanagan, and Bill Pellerin. This telescope has a wide range of filters, and has typical seeing in the 1-2" range. We really, really appreciate access to this facility1
BSM_Berry. Operational.
BSM_Hamren. This system remains off-line. We are tracking down a "joysticking" issue with the Paramount ME. A volunteer team from Keck has been very helpful. We're hoping to replace the main MKS4000 control board in the near future.
BSM_NH2. Operational.
BSM_NM. Operational.
BSM_S. Off-line. Peter Nelson is constructing a new observatory for this system, but has been stymied by rain and mud.
BSM_TX. Operational. We've replaced the original STF-8300 camera with a new QHY268M, donated by Dr. Qiu of QHY. This camera will give a bigger field of view, especially in the N/S direction, and finer pixelization to take advantage of the superb seeing at its Texas site. However, the filters remain the original 1.25" variety (it really needs 36mm filters), so the corners will be vignetted. We've added an SU filter and the diffraction grating that used to be on BSM_NH2.
MPO61. Operational.
OC61. Operational, but showing its age. This is the next system to be upgraded.
SRO50. Off-line. Mike Shade, on whose property SRO was sited, has moved to Red Hill, NM and is building a new rolloff. We hope to move SRO50 to this new site, but there have been complications. John Gross, the SRO owner/manager, passed away a few weeks ago. While the move is still possible, the remaining SRO partners (Walt Cooney, Dirk Terrell and Arne Henden) are discussing whether this move should take place or whether it is time to close the system down and sell its hardware.
TMO61. Operational.
Arne