February
We spent the month at Winer Observatory in Sonoita AZ gathering radial velocity data on tau Boo. To our dismay, the new grating was producing ghosts, so we had to block half of it and continue. The system worked flawlessly without technical problems for the whole run but the weather was less than cooperative. See Tau Boo for the results.
May
We discover a 1.1 meter blank in the back yard of Norm Oberle and purchased it for the project. At approximately the same time, we found a government surplus grinding machine big enough to handle 900 lbs of glass. See 1.1 Meter for progress on the mirror. The Spectrashift Team expands with new members covering optical design, software and remote control.
We spent the month at Winer Observatory in Sonoita AZ gathering radial velocity data on tau Boo. To our dismay, the new grating was producing ghosts, so we had to block half of it and continue. The system worked flawlessly without technical problems for the whole run but the weather was less than cooperative. See Tau Boo for the results.
May
We discover a 1.1 meter blank in the back yard of Norm Oberle and purchased it for the project. At approximately the same time, we found a government surplus grinding machine big enough to handle 900 lbs of glass. See 1.1 Meter for progress on the mirror. The Spectrashift Team expands with new members covering optical design, software and remote control.