Stone Edge Observatory

This page contains telescope team information about SEO.

Table of Contents:

Images & Galleries

• • Raw and Reduced Data: Raw data is on starts under stars.uchicago.edu/images. It can be viewed on the webviewer under stars.uchicago.edu/fitsview24. Images taken with the gui are automatically added to this repository. Marc and Valeri are keeping the server up to date, more details on Stars Server.

  • Stone Edge Deep Sky Object Gallery by Kyrstyn Ong.

  • A Gallery of Stoneedge images is on the Voices page under voices.uchicago.edu/stoneedgeobservatory/gallery.

  • You can find other images taken by Yerkes Students on the Pictures of the Universe Blog on the stars server.

Tasks and Projects

Summer 2020 Projects

• • Telescope:

    • IR Camera: Install and check out camera, update pipeline to work with IR camera. Check it!

      • Main challenges: beam is off-center. Need LOTS of exposure (really fast - few seconds exposure) to see anything. No filter wheel yet. There are many parameters we can set on the camera.

    • Main Camera: Send to manufacturer to pump out. This will happen early August since Rich Kron will use the camera for teaching until then.

    • Washing main Mirror. This can be done at SEO while the camera is being repaired.

    • Spare Camera: Have replacement while main camera is being fixed.

    • Vignetting: See if it's possible to remove restriction causing the vignetting and/or add black paint.

    • Set up scripting system. It's possible to talk to Itzamna using a web interface.

  • Pipeline / Webinterface: Other tasks see Image Pipeline page.

    • Finish image combination using StepCoadd for same filter

    • Fix / Update stepRGB: Fix image selection. Shift according to RA/DEC for good overlap (to avoid images like ngc5774 or m97) also allow images with different sizes. See details on Pipeline page.

    • Better integration with CCDproc: Make DRP PipeData object that can be handed over to CCDproc directly.

    • Make png or jpeg pipedata object which can be used as output and contains all header information.

    • Have a way to search and select images. Use a database, see Summer Projects > Database on the 2020 ASTR21200 class wiki.

    • Update WCS to allow use of astrometry.net over the internet.

    • For Itzamna data sort the data to have one folder for each object.

    • Add diagnostic for observations quality

    • StepPSF to get psf for each good quality star (bright but not saturated). Can also be used for atmospheric extinction correction. We can compare student code with PSFEx. This step would generate a PSF for the telescope. See ASTR21200_2020/Projects/WCS/VOApy.py on the google drive for existing code (this code does something similar as PSFEx). Both codes use the output from source extractor (which is provided by StepFluxCalSex).

      • StepNormalize: Makes sure every star has correct flux - ask Al for details.

    • Pipestep to Normalize the intensities correcting for atmospheric extinction muli-input-multi-output (MIMO) step to reduce multiple nights of data.

    • Idea: We could use parts of LSST pipeline.

    • Use astroalign instead of WCS and Coadd to stack the images --> Then do WCS and backwards set WCS for each image. This could be a step that calls stepWCS and if it fails it adjusts the other images.

    • Use background subtraction from ASTR21200 variability group to make an independent pipestep to reduce background.

    • Change stepfluxcalsex to add the background image so it can be subtracted later.

  • Queue: see also github.com/yerkesobservatory/atlas/issues for things to upgrade on the Queue.

    • Possible to make time series observations.

    • Ability for the user to choose a session when their observations are run.

  • Background observations: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m9Bned5Dvi5jR8bA3flrlFAy9RhVbI4Kn-41XDdsCYs

  • Data Analysis:

    • Many Darks/Flats: Ask Al for details

    • Delta Dark image analysis -> What is noise

    • Change of Focus over night, temperature

    • Investigate Light leaks.

    • Long series of Darks during Daytime and Through Night (to investigate light leaks and camera dark current).

      • This would also allow us to get a bad pixel map.

    • Improve: Photometric accuracy

    • Measure precession: Run during the night and find RA/DEC of the center of rotation. We can repeat the experiment after a few weeks and compare to measure precession.

  • Items from Matt:

    • The IR camera work is a great idea. The queue and itzamna code will also need to be updated to test/use it. I have information from Dick on how to do that.

    • I am refactoring itzamna. This includes updating functionality that has been lost, like the Wunderground access. The overall plan is to make it more reliable and to structure it such that we (or someone else) could use it with their telescope. I have started this on (my) git was under ixchel (ee-shell).

    • Amanda has been looking at a second observing strategy for the queue which grabs targets as soon as they are available above a defined elevation. The think this option could expedite the queue process or at least help to prevent orphan targets at the end of the night.

    • The queue needs better status reporting, including on a per observation basis. This could be on the website, or just in a log file or in Slack.

Summer 2019 Job Description: 

We are looking for one or two undergraduates to work part time over the summer on projects involving the Stone Edge Observatory (SEO). The SEO is a privately owned telescope in Sonoma, CA to which UChicago has remote access, and is actively being incorporated into the undergraduate astronomy curriculum. The student will work with an existing team of astronomers and technicians at UChicago and elsewhere. The primary goal of this summer's work is to increase the reliability of the SEO for queued remote observation, and to establish a library of backup observations ready for analysis in UChicago astronomy courses. Other, related projects are also available depending on demand and student interest. 

Students will be using python to write scripts for astronomical data reduction, verification, and analysis. Therefore, previous coding experience - especially in python - is strongly desired. As well, knowledge of observational techniques in astronomy will be beneficial. We are ideally looking for students in the astrophysics major, but students in physics, math, or computer science may also find this work complimentary to their studies. 

Sites and Links

Detailed information about Stone Edge is on the google site under sites.google.com/a/starsatyerkes.net/stone-edge-obs.

Stone Edge users cooperate on Slack, under stoneedgeobservatory.slack.com. Contact Amanda or Kate for an account.

The queue is at queue.stoneedgeobservatory.org. As of January 2018 the page is still in development.

• • Most of the queue system is self-explanatory (ask Amanda or Remy if you have questions).

  • The system dithers by ~5-10 pixels

  • Pointing: Matt's pinpoint routine is used (30s exposure with astrometrica).

  • Flats / Bias and Darks are taken based on Dick's script which has been working well for Matt. They get bundled with the raw files when they are transferred to stars (as .tar.gz).

  • Queue only runs when the telescope is not booked. Behavior is unclear if someone uses the telescope manually during queue observations.

The software team collaborates on github under github.com/yerkesobservatory.

• • atlas, atlas-client and seo-modules are all software related to the queue

  • pipeline is the code for the data reduction pipeline

The code for itzamna, a slack tool is on github under mcnowinski/seo.

Computers at Yerkes with updated tunnel and Astro Image Processor and tunnel key are

yerkesstudent 10, 14,15,17,18,19

The old official website was on the Voices site voices.uchicago.edu/stoneedgeobservatory - made by Amanda September 2016. As of Sept 2017 it may still contain some unique items.

SEO Reports

End-of-Year Report 2018/2019:

Link