RE: Target zone selection

["Albertson, Chris" <CAlbertson@primeadvantage.com>]

All of the cameras that work, currently just do a simple
scan.  The RA drive just goes back and fourth.  So it depends
on your longitude and when you turned on the system,
exposure times and so on.  With planning one _can_ hit
a specific target but this is, I'm sure far from what
you were thinking of.

I am working, slowly, on real-time control system that
will provide among other features a "go to" capability
where you can feed in a target list or scan parameters.

If you have any ideas about how to schedule a survey please
post them to the list.  The Mk IV does have some constraints:
It's pointing ability is declination is crude so it may be
best to limit movement in DEC.  RA movement is restricted to 
something like about 20 degrees either side of center.  Other 
questions are how long to make the exposures and so on. 
These are only the engineering considerations.  The science you
are interested in will dictate your plan too.  For example
completing a wide field survey seems to compete with finding
short period variables.  I guess one could do some of each.
Scheduling is an interesting problem that really has not
been addressed well yet.  Scheduling becomes even a more
interesting problem if you want to treat all six or eight Mk IV
camera as a "system" that works together.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Welch> 
> 
> Can someone fill me in on the target planning for the Mark IV's?
> I have tried to track down discussion of this in the archives,
> but didn't see anything in the last few months. How are the
> target zones decided?