VV Cep this night

[marcoastro+]

Great work as a pioneer in remote spectroscopy, Andrew.
Success,

Kind regards,
Marc.

[Robin Leadbeater]

Hi Andrew,

Not impossible and I expect it will come at some stage but there have been several failed attempts to date and I dont see any results from amateurs using truly remotely operated systems yet (ie operated from a different part of the world as is done routinely now for imaging and photometry). I think one problem with installing something on one of these remotely operated telescope farms would the availablity of suitably technically competent people on site to tune it and fix it when things inevitably go wrong.

Are the LCOGS FLOYDS spectrographs finally available for amateurs/education now? I was approached about how it might be used for education about a year ago but they were still not able to reduce the data reliably (It is a very unusual low resolution two order "echelle" type design) that I declined until it was more sorted.

Cheers
Robin

[Robin Leadbeater]

A nice project, I'm following, is the IOWA Robotic Observatory which is testing this summer a new Echelle medium resolution spectrograph to be used for remote spectroscopy.

http://astro.physics.uiowa.edu/iro/equi ... meter.html

Yes the easy part is over but the hard part is yet to come

"It is fully functional, but the robotic operation and calibration software is under active development."

Robin

[Robin Leadbeater]

Are the LCOGS FLOYDS spectrographs finally available for amateurs/education now? I was approached about how it might be used for education about a year ago but they were still not able to reduce the data reliably (It is a very unusual low resolution two order "echelle" type design) that I declined until it was more sorted.

Sorry it is FRODOSPEC on the Liverpool Telescope. Work on that started years ago and I lost track of it. Is it finally working now then ?

Robin

[Robin Leadbeater]

I see results from the Liverpool Telescope very low resolution SPRAT spectrograph (their equivalent of my ALPY200) come up from time to time in the list of confirmed supernovae though.

Robin

[marcoastro+]

Hi Robin,

Apparently FRODOSPEC is operational. I remember spectral reports from May this year:

http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=10366

Kind regards,
Marc.

[Ernst Pollmann]

Dear colleagues,
please be so friendly to continue the "remote conversation" in a separate thread.
It confuses the actual discussion to the physics of VV Cep.

Ernst

[Jack Martin]

Ernst,

As Prof Shore suggested in 2015 at OHP vv cep lecture a 24 hour coverage by observers world wide.

A communication network, Skype link or Whats app could make it possible ?

I attach that 'quick' spectrum I could not load the other night.

I have not received a reply from my previous email so jackmartin781@gmail.com works not btopenworld the problem is at there end most frustrating.

Regards,

Jack

Essex UK

[marcoastro+]

Indeed, Ernst, back to the VVCephei campaign.
As the clear sky is leaving us here for a couple of days I took some time to create a kind of "emblem"or "logo" for the campaign.
Therefore I used a picture I took on July 22th 2017 with a Nikon D500 and a 8mm Fisheye lens to catch the Cephei constellation at midnight from our home.
Polaris is positioned just above to the right of the logo. Cassiopeia at the bottom of the photograph and VV Cephei is clearly visible, ready to take a spectrum.

Enjoy:

VVCEPLOGOTRYP.jpg (178.62 KiB) Viewed 11318 times

Kind regards,
Cordialement,

Marc.

[Ernst Pollmann]

Dear Marc,
it´s a really nice logo, indeed. Question is, how could we embedded it into our (mostly) dayly conversation?
Independend of that question, I re-calculated the starting point of the eclipse. Based on my objectiv-prism spectrograph observations in 1997/99 (IBVS No. 5173), I have determined the beginning of eclipse 2017/19 with the 7430 day period on JD 2450511, July 06 2017.
On the other hand, the assumption of a certain amount of mass transfer during each peri-astron, is described in almost all professional publications. So, I would also agree to your consideration, but the only question is, what is the order of magnitude of mass transfer and the resulting time delay concerning the eclipse we expect.
Since we are not able to estimate this unsure factor, we can do only one thing ... to wait.

Best wishes,
Ernst