By Asatron on Saturday, 14 November 2020
Posted in Pier Maintenance
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Good morning everyone I have had a couple of emails in the last few days asking about data and rather than responding to individual emails I thought I would do a mass email to get everyone up to speed in case they missed my last email explaining where we were and why the delays. A, Roboscopes observatory maintenance and bringing other piers on line On the 15th of October we started the long drive to Spain and returned on the 3rd of November. Whilst in Spain we managed to get everything done we had hoped and more but this meant that we were working late into the night with white lights and the roof closed so to all intent and purpose the observatory was down and no imaging could take place, this was unfortunate and unavoidable I am afraid. Covid had curtailed almost all trips and maintenance and having only half the observatory working was unacceptable to us as astronomer not to mention financially. The maintenance had to be done before the next lockdown as we feared travel would not be possible again until well into the new year or even spring. By the looks of things with mass lockdowns across Europe and now the Spanish border requiring a clear Covid test under 72hrs old to allow admittance into Spain we were indeed sensible to do what we did. B, The last few days we were in Spain Autumn had reared it’s head with some nasty westerlies in the Atlantic basin, we had to do quite a lot of cloud/rain dodging to to get our tasks complete. I am afraid to say that these fronts have continued and look set to continue for another 5 days or so before we hope normal weather patterns ensue. Since our return we have had some small breaks in the weather with very high murk which has allowed us to get everything tested and back online but none of it was what we would deem “imaging quality” weather. So, as much as we would like to we cannot control the weather and it’s out of our control (see some snapshots at the bottom of the email) As soon as it clears we will begin collecting data and completing orders very quickly and trust me you do not need to ask as we are well aware that some data is late because of A, the essential maintenance B, the weather So please bear with us and it will be done, however if because of A or B we have missed an imaging slot for an object please let me know and we can either refund. Change objects or come to another mutual arrangement The silver lining is we now have 13 exciting working systems and a new world class mount, so for some short term pain the gains will be very much long term with more systems and reliability Kind regards Steve and the team 11-nov-2.jpg 11-nov-2.jpg 12-nov.jpg 14-nov.jpg 12-nov.jpg
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