Monthly report for April

Once per month I am required to write a status report about the state of our project.

First observation (of 2) scheduled

During April, our first observation was scheduled for May 14 using MIPS on Spitzer. The observation will be May 14 2005 10:40:36.400 UT, or 3:40 AM Pacific Daylight Time on the night of May 13th /morning of the 14th.

Recruiting of ground based observers

Jeff sent a recruiting email to a number of people (including Stephen Pompea) and others who may be able to observe our target. The cc list includes the observers and original participants. I have communicated with several of these people and added their questions and our answers to the web site.

Observing FAQ

A new observing FAQ was written and continues to be edited with the assistance of Mark Lacy and others. It is posted here: http://homepage.mac.com/dvhscience/SpaceAcademy/Projects/Spitzer/observingfaq.html. These instructions will help ground based observers contribute to our project.

Workshops

Jeff presented a workshop at Deer Valley High School using the infrared teaching kit to a small group of teachers and students. The workshop was well received, and resulted in several teachers borrowing the photocell-amplifier circuit for demonstration in their own rooms.

Jeff presented a very brief synopsis of the project to the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society and invited them to participate.

Jeff has added a couple of workshops to the main project page including a session at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair next month.

Training meeting

Per Stephen Pompea and Doris Dao's instruction, Jeff asked everyone on the original team when a good time to meet would be (to learn how to reduce the data). We can get everyone except Linda on the week of October 4. Steve Rapp, Linda, and Mark: How about the week of October 31?

Student Involvement

Jeff's student Brielle Hinckley has taken an active role in pursuing the ground-based observation of our target. She has already taken approximately 10 images of 4C 29.45 over two different observing sessions, all using luminance (clear) filters. Several other students have assisted in collecting images using the New Mexico Skies system, sponsored by TLRBSE's school year observing program. Preliminary results from the data reduction will be available by the end of next month.

Because our finder charts and references have UVBRI filter data, we requested images from this set from our volunteer observers. We inquired with Steven Croft about obtaining enough time to do 4 observations with NM Skies using these filters, which come via a 4 hour overhead charge from NM Skies to change and align the filter wheel assembly from its usual RGB configuration. Consulting with Mark Lacy, Hinckley has been charged with making a decision about whether or not to use luminance + R from the RGB set, or to write a proposal to the telescope allocation committee to get time to make UVBRI observations. Mark Lacy advised us that R in RGB is comparable to R in UVBRI, which may be minimally sufficient for our purposes, but on the other hand the Spitzer science requirements are not exactly the same as the creation of a research project for the students independent of the teacher's work. When we decide what to do we'll notify the relevant parties. In any case, we hope to collect some UVBRI data from the volunteer observers, and set the project students to the task of reducing the images to data under the coordination of Hinckley.

Many thanks to the volunteer observers. If you have questions or advice, please don't hesitate to send either one. I would like to know from the volunteers if they would like a link back to their institutions and if they would mind having a name and email contact (using the name "at" domain format to reduce spam) posted on the project web page.

Next month

We are anticipating a second observation with IRAC later in the observing window, but we are proceeding at best possible speed on everything we can on the scheduled observation.

Additional workshops are scheduled as noted on the project page, including a large public display at the Contra Costa County Fair.

Jeff Adkins
Deer Valley High School
http://homepage.mac.com/dvhscience/SpaceAcademy/Projects/Spitzer/index.html