Progress as Usual

[Tom Droege <droege@wwa.com>]

I have been working away beating down the little nits that are so 
bothersome.  The new camera spacer rings came in today, and I am gluing up 
one as I type.  We shall see if this does not hold a better vacuum.

I think I am committed to the dry gas flow.  It works if I do not leave the 
cameras in the wet too long without gas flow.  Last night's run had a few 
ice crystals on the I camera because I turned it on too fast.  It looks 
like I need to run the dry air at a two bubble per second rate for about 4 
hours if I don't want to see ice.  I suppose it depends on how wet the air 
is.  The last few days we have had a lot of rain.

I called Lockheed today to see when the next 10 CCD chips will be 
shipped.  Jim Johnson (He is the "new" (old) guy in charge now.  He has 
been called back from retirement to get things moving.) asked why I needed 
taped on covers.  I said because of the ice problem and that I had seen ice 
on the "sealed" chips.  It turns out that the early "sealed" chips I have 
are probably not sealed.  For a sealed chip, there is a tube coming out the 
back.  So I am waiting on a drawing to see if I can drill a hole to 
accommodate the sealing tube.

A sealed dry CCD would solve most of the ice problem.  I would still want 
to circulate dry air though to prevent frost on the cover and filter.

I now have about 40 CCD ROMs of data with about the same properties as that 
on Data Disk 15.  This should produce 20 or so measurements in two filters 
on 100,000 stars over about 480 square degrees of sky.  I think this data 
would about double the tenxcat.  It might be worth reducing this data.  I 
have been mostly taking it to figure out the problems of day to day 
operation.  It is not so bad.  Does anyone want to grab this data and 
reduce it to a catalog?  It looks like Jure has worked through what it 
would take.  If someone wants to work up the software, I will process the 
disks through if it is something that is possible for me.  Or I will just 
send out the disks.

I think the data will get better, but not a lot better.  So this data might 
be worth processing.  OK, it does not have the good things that Jure has 
suggested in the .fts headers, so it will be a non-standard data set.

Tom Droege