Proposal #226

The ODYSSEUS program continues. The next monitoring target is GM Aur, which will be observed 12 times with the HST between 13 October and 5 November. These observations will be simultaneous with TESS observations.
The goal of the program is to study accretion processes that lead to the formation of stars and planets.

I request nightly observations for the ~27 nights, 10 October through 6 November 2021.
The goal of the ODYSSEUS program is to obtain supporting observations, including optical photometry, to assist in the interpretation of the UV spectra. While TESS will provide high fidelity single-channel photometry, the TESS PSF will be contaminated by SU Aur (30" separation), so the GM Aur photometry will be difficult to extract cleanly in the TESS images (21" pixels). Ground-based data are absolutely critical for separating the contributions of the two targets, as well as for gathering color information.

This program, especially for northern targets, has been very successful to date, with data published or in press for two of our Fall 2020 targets, CVSO-104 and CVSO-109.