From 2015-2018, I was a member of SSRO The Star Shadows Remote Observatory in PROMPT2 at CTIO near La Serena, Chile.
Located high atop the Atacama Desert, the 5-member team (Hanson, Keller, Mazlin, Parker, Tse) remotely operated a 16" f/11.3 RCOS Ritchey-Chrétien owned by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Tracking on a PlaneWave 200HR Ascension equatorial mount,
images were acquired with an FLI ProLine 16803 CCD camera, 8-position SBIG filter wheel, and L-R-G-B, Ha, OIII, and SII filters.
Generally, 15-hours of luminance, and 12-hours of each color channel were collected, for a total exposure time of ~50-hours. Subexposures were 1,800 seconds at 1 x 1 binning. Seeing was often below 0.5 arcseconds.
Unfortunately, in 2017, our arrangement with Dr. Dan Reichart UNC began to devolve into a morass of poor communication
(on their part) and multiple equipment failures. By 2019, it became an untenable situation.
I currently "Rely on the kindness of strangers" for my data!
Located high atop the Atacama Desert, the 5-member team (Hanson, Keller, Mazlin, Parker, Tse) remotely operated a 16" f/11.3 RCOS Ritchey-Chrétien owned by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Tracking on a PlaneWave 200HR Ascension equatorial mount,
images were acquired with an FLI ProLine 16803 CCD camera, 8-position SBIG filter wheel, and L-R-G-B, Ha, OIII, and SII filters.
Generally, 15-hours of luminance, and 12-hours of each color channel were collected, for a total exposure time of ~50-hours. Subexposures were 1,800 seconds at 1 x 1 binning. Seeing was often below 0.5 arcseconds.
Unfortunately, in 2017, our arrangement with Dr. Dan Reichart UNC began to devolve into a morass of poor communication
(on their part) and multiple equipment failures. By 2019, it became an untenable situation.
I currently "Rely on the kindness of strangers" for my data!
