Question about Scheduling

Aaron, Dan, et al — thank you for the impressive software upgrade.  Huge help to an already-impressive system.  Two questions regarding the algorithm:

 1.  If a sequence of, say, 4 cycles of observations are scheduled and Skynet only finishes 3 of them on a single night (for whatever reason):  will Skynet return to complete the sequence on following nights?

 2.  How do successive cycles of observations within a single job deal with the airmass limit?  For example, if the first two blocks of observations are under the airmass limit but the third block of observations exceeds it what happens?  (Will it take only the first two?  Will it kill all 3? THrow up?  What?) 

Solar System Objects

It would be nice to be able to observe solar system objects.

Currently if we type in a planet, we tried "jupiter", it can't find it. I think this is because the RA and Dec are time dependent.

In the future, it would be nice to use PROMPT to study comets, asteroids, and other such stuff — not just letting students observe the major planets for class.

Thanks so much! — Jonathan

Telescope and software announcements

P3 and P5 have had their cameras return, so they are back online. We are finetuning some of the software, so they may not be perfect right away, but feel free to schedule jobs for them.

We have deployed new versions of the software that control the PROMPT scopes, so there might be a bug or two that pop up. Please report any oddities that you notice.

There was an update to the web interface as well. In addition to some small cosmetic changes, we now have an early version of scheduled observations. You can now specify a minimum start time for your observations (so tell it not to start until after 1:00 AM for instance) in addition to the solar angle and airmass constraints. You can also make the job periodically repeating (take these same 3 V band exposures every hour for a total of four sets, for instance.) You should be aware that due to the nature of que based scheduling, there is no guarantee that your observation will happen at exactly 1:00 AM or that it will repeat in exactly 1 hour (in the above examples) since there may be a higher priority job in your way. But this should provide you with greater flexibility for certain types of science.

–Aaron

Exposure times and limiting airmass

I am wondering if it is possible to expand the exposure time range. I would really be interested in getting some brighter stars with exposure times as short as about 0.05 or 0.1 seconds. What is the shortest exposure time the cameras were tested with? A possibility to have a bit longer exposures, say, up to 100 or 120 seconds would also be appreciated.

Airmasses. Is it possible to lower the airmass limit? Say, to make it 1.2 or 1.3 so that the object could be observed at high elevations for sure. You could still avoid the closeness to the meridian limit.

Such small adjustments would help expanding our research program and making some observations more accurate.