Weather:
Clearing and cool. It looks to be an ideal night – lows around 60F, no wind.
Rig #1:
More spectra of the Si lines in Deneb’s spectrum, H-alpha for P-Cyg. For the U Montreal BRITE campaign. Most definitely have to get going on reducing all the data from this project.
Rig #2:
A long sequence on GD552, per request of Joe Patterson. I did a series on this star two nights ago and got some decent data. In fact the standard deviation in the comp star differential magnitudes was the lowest I’ve ever achieved, around 0.003 magnitudes. Due in no small measure to having really solid guiding and not having to flip the telescope at the meridian. At that declination I should be able to track about three hours past the meridian. So far this year I’ve gotten two nights on this target – which Joe claims is refusing to show any orbital signal:
GD 552 = Cep 1 (no clear periodic signal yet). The latter is sort of baffling – we should be able to find that orbital signal (revealed by spectroscopy, so we know where it should be). It’s a star of enormous significance – probably the oldest CV in the sky – so anything we learn about it would be great. Davud Cejudo has been observing it from Spain; some long runs by USA observers would greatly help to set a stringent limit on periodic signals – or better yet, find one.
Out at 2:30am.
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