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Tue. June 22, 1999
A star chart is born
Today, like yesterday, felt like a rather productive day. Although the Lowell Observatory server was down and prevented me from getting some tracking information on our target asteroids, I got a good deal accomplished. During the day I organized all the location tables (or ephemeris) for the asteroids. For the first time we got a perspective on where our asteroids actually lie in the sky. I marked where about 35 out of our 50 or so asteroids are on a star chart. Most of the bodies fall towards the first half of our evening sky. My next task will be to find a few more on the other side to add a little balance to our observing possibilities. We never know what kind of wrenches will be thrown into our observational cogs when we're at Kitt Peak.
Tonight was spent in the astronomy lab working on yet another mount this time for a CCD camera and a spectrometer. Jason is the brains behind the design of the giant erector set mount and I've been mostly the braun; cutting and trimming the metal lattice where ever needed. God bless the Dremel Roto Tool. Everything is coming together nicely and it all fits in the little screw holes at the back of our 16" telescope. Now these taunting evenings of partly cloudy skies need to settle into a pattern of totally clear ones from tomorrow night until the day we leave for AZ. We need practice with this equipment and that should happen here. We'll try to do mock observation runs with bright asteroids if/when the weather becomes more photometric. Tomorrow night, I can feel it...
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