First Observing Session

Tuesday evening, Nov 26

Okay, the sky looks beautiful, but the forecast calls for increasing clouds, particularly towards morning. We’ll give KIC 9832227 a try anyway.

I’ve pointed the telescope at KIC 9832227. It’s now about 7pm, and the telescope is focused and pointed in the right direction; the camera is cooled and ready to go; the sky is still clear (although a bit windy — this will tend to make the stars look a bit fuzzy/blurry).

I’m a bit uncertain about where this star is in the sky. In particular, it appears to be just far enough north that it is circumpolar (and thus, will never set). But, looking at the sky and trying to imagine its motion throughout the night, it looks like it’s going to get really, really close to the horizon at some point tonight (if it doesn’t actually dip below the horizon). However, the computer in the telescope mount tells me that it can track this star for the next 608 minutes. So, 7pm + 608 minutes = 5:08am.

We’re set up for the following:

• Take 30-second exposure pictures from now until 5:08am
• Just save the exposures for later extraction of KIC 9832227’s brightness
• Try to keep KIC 9832227 centered in the pictures

And now it’s running. So far so good. We’ll let the computer take over, and set the alarm for 5:30am.

Good night…