November Progress Update

After last months brief period of observations we are sorry to report that the ART is still unable to perform autonomous observations due to continuing hardware faults.

New Request Constructor

The most important part of interacting with the telescope in Tenerife - the request constructor - has just been upgraded. Over one year in development, this latest iteration should be quicker and easier to use, no matter what you are using the telescope to do.

New Image Viewer Now Live

I am excited to present the very latest version of our online FITS editing tools, now live on the site for you to use. While other sites either provide a static jpeg or (sometimes) give you a FITS file, which you need specialist software to open, we are unique in offering a simple-to-use interface for editing your data, right in your web browser. Our newest, third generation FITS viewer is going to push the boundaries of what you thought was possible in a web page, and the first stage of the release is now live.

Master Dark and Bias Frames

In order to get a good image back from a CCD on the back of a telescope, there are a number of processes you have to put the image through to account for discrepancies and errors. These include applying bias and dark frames as well as flat fielding. We handle these for you automatically, but for those that like to do things by hand we are now producing master dark and bias frames for more advanced users to use.

Fun with Domes (PART 4)

The dome pointing algorithm has so far been improved a good amount but there are still some things that can be done; things that require much more than merely tweaking some parameters.

Fun with Domes (PART 3)

This is where I start delving deeper into the mathematics behind the dome control algorithms. After all this it was a good week before I stopped having dreams about spherical polar coordinate transforms.

Fun with Domes (PART 2)

In my last blog post I talked about how I had started to investigate the positioning of the dome and I had found some areas of the sky where the galaxy camera was being obscured by the top of the dome.

Fun with Domes (PART 1)

Over the last week or so I have been doing some investigating into the algorithms that control the positioning of the dome throughout the night. It has been a long journey full of pitfalls and surprises but it might be leading to better dome positioning from now on.

Massively Improved Flatfield System

The telescope has had flat fielding built into it for some time now in order to improve the quality of images we return. Today I fixed some problems with how those flat-fields are applied, which will improve images enormously.

What I'm working on

So I realise I haven't exactly been writing much on my blog so let me say a little bit about the projects I'm currently working on.