Update on network issues

We have been experiencing some rather annoying network troubles over the past couple of months that were causing the PROMPT telescopes to lose their connection to Skynet.  While this was due in part to network issues between here and Chile, it was also due in large part to some less than optimal behavior in the underlying code.  Kevin has recently tracked this down, so we should now have a much more stable connection to the telescopes.  This means that more jobs should get done in a timely fashion and some parts of the Skynet website may be a bit snappier.

SKYNET Interface??

DSS image is great, SIMBAD lookup also…..but none of my downloads work today (not header nor jpeg nor fits) for any image I’ve taken. Skynet generates a blank white screen when asking for a download.

Skynet ?

Is the PROMPT/Skynet website having problems this morning (Friday)? We’re having difficulty reaching the site…….

Pointing Problem, Redux

The same problem (here) seemed to reassert itself on March 11/12 with all of my images, though everything seemed to function fine for me on March 10/11.  I’m using P4.  An example would be obs 1281 on Mar 11/12 — the image is some field I don’t recognize.  On March 10/11 the same object (obs 1253) lists the same RA and DEC in the image header but this time the object I wanted is present in the field.  Same for other pairs of images from these two nights (i.e. 1253 is fine on Mar 10/11, but points to some other field for obs 1279 on Mar 11/12).

Tracking problems

As you may have noticed, I submit rather long runs of time-series images on eclipsing binaries. I finally found time to reduce a several hour long run and found a huge amount of drift on PROMPT 4 — about 20 – 25% of the field! It is large both in dec and right ascension so there is obviously a large polar alignment error on this scope. I am lucky that my comparison stars stayed on the chip. Has anybody else found problems on other scopes? This would normally be of little concern to GRB event observers but is annoying for long runs on one object.

Image storage problem

There is definitely an image storage problem on PROMPT telescopes. I noticed it earlier and sent a message to Dan about 2 weeks ago. Today I experienced it once again with PROMPT4. It refers to the observation 1073. The images of the field obtained by PROMPT4 correspond to another set of coordinates, probably to one of those NCG objects from the observations 1077 or 1078. My object was a single star, but I got a cluster. I think that coordinates are seriously needed in the FITS header.