Rob McNaughts 33rd!

[Outbackmanyep]

Woohoo!
You guys are doing a terrific job, i guess there not much more room to improve with the routine you have ....obviously it works and works well!

How much more difficult is it to detect comets due to moonlight?

[loomberah (Gordon)]

Its all good if we have mostly clear skies! but we cant cover the entire southern sky (minus crowded Milky Way areas) each month if we get a lot of cloudy nights. We generally don't operate 3 nights either side of FM, as productivity is way down due to the bight sky. Dark skies are obviously better for detecting a faint coma, so if theres a bright moon up it will definitely reduce our chances of detecting it. Keep in mind that we only do 20 or 30 sec exposures, so very faint comas wont always be obvious anyway.

cheers, Gordon

[Outbackmanyep]

I wouldnt mind saying hello next time im out at Siding Spring, unless you're too busy during the daytime, i am planning to go out there sometime in July to hopefully tour the mountain and have a look at the buildings......would be great to catch up for a chat!

[loomberah (Gordon)]

I'll be around about half the time in July, Rob will be away most of the month on holiday. I generally go mountain biking during the afternoons, after sleeping in the mornings, but if its crappy weather I'll probably be on the mountain. Give me plenty of notice and I'm sure we can arrange something. At the moment ANU are planning to close the visitor centre down at the end of May, I'm not sure what, if anything, they plan on doing about public access after that.

cheers, gordon

[CometGuy]

Gordon,

I've got a couple of questions about the Siding Spring survey

Are there any plans to go to smaller solar elongations with the survey? I notice you guys don't tend to go in much less than 60 degrees from the sun on the coverage charts.

Somebody asked me the other day whether you and Rob automated detection software for minor planets/comets, but I assumed you still scanned the images by eye. Is this true?

Terry

[loomberah (Gordon)]

Hi Terry, we sometimes go closer to the sun, but small elongations have the problem of making it more difficult to get follow up observations on the same night, as well as the limiting magnitude being brighter near the horizon. I like to operate as high as possible above the horizon where the seeing is better and the extinction is less in order to go deeper. So, now you know where to look for comets

As I think I mentioned in a previous post, the software presents us with a list of what it thinks might be moving objects, and we visually inspect everything in the list to see if it is real or not. The vast majority of the detections are not real objects, and if its a bunch of dozens or hundreds of detections around a bright star, we have a command to allow regions of the image to be excluded from the list, so we don't waste too much time looking at noise.


cheers, Gordon

[Outbackmanyep]

Originally Posted by loomberah

I'll be around about half the time in July, Rob will be away most of the month on holiday. I generally go mountain biking during the afternoons, after sleeping in the mornings, but if its crappy weather I'll probably be on the mountain. Give me plenty of notice and I'm sure we can arrange something. At the moment ANU are planning to close the visitor centre down at the end of May, I'm not sure what, if anything, they plan on doing about public access after that.

cheers, gordon

Thanks Gordon,
I'll PM you when the time gets closer, its frustrating to hear that they're closing the visitors centre down, i have been waiting for an opportunity to tour the mountain and just like governments they move the goalposts again!
I'll keep in touch!
You dont live too far away from me!
Do you know where Walcha is??
Cheers!

[loomberah (Gordon)]

The last (ever?) public tour of the mountain was a couple of weeks ago, I heard about 50 people turned up for it.

Yes I know where Walcha is been there plenty of times over the past ~30 years!

cheers, Gordon