Proposal #314

Hi Team AAVSOnet!

I would like to try AAVSOnet for astrometry of double stars, if that would be an acceptable use of the network. Double star astrometry is a great introductory project for students as they are getting into variable star photometry, because it helps them to learn the “tools of the trade” and gain an understanding of what is involved in a simple astronomy research study. Rachel Freed and Russ Genet have been (and will be) providing several workshops on this for high school teachers, which I would like to reference in my AAVSO How-To teacher workshop in April.

To that end, I have four targets that my students are studying. If it would be possible to take 10 images of each of these targets, I would appreciate it very much! I’ve been having them use a PanSTARRS-w filter, but any filter with a relatively wide bandpass would work well. (You could even use no filter or a “clear” filter if that is easiest.) One of the four targets is so bright (mag 5) that a narrower bandpass might be a good idea to prevent saturation.

For each of these, I am including the recommended exposure times for the LCO 0.4-m telescopes, just as a starting point. (On those scopes, 60 seconds tends to be a good exposure time for a typical mag 12.5 star using PanSTARRS-w, so the formula we use to compute exposure time for other magnitudes is (60 seconds) * 2.5^(magnitude - 12.5).) In the form that accompanies this request, I entered "Minimum Magnitude" as the magnitude of the primary star and "Maximum Magnitude" as the magnitude of the secondary star of the double star pair. I did not see a place to enter a number of images on the form, but in order for the data to be acceptable for a JDSO publication, we would need 10 images of each target. (The exposure times are all relatively short, so hopefully that will work.)

Thank you so much for considering this request! :) Kalee

Name Kailash_WFC11, Coordinates 03 02 13.96 +50 05 39.5, Magnitudes 10.6, 11.2, Exposure time: 15s
Name Justin_STF401AB, Coordinates 03 31 20.76 +27 34 18.5, Magnitudes 6.6, 6.9 Exposure time: 1s
Name Kailash_DUN31, Coordinates 06 38 37.64 -48 13 12.6, Magnitudes 5.1, 7.5 Exposure time: 0.5s
Name Jett_ES889, Coordinates 05 14 21.19 +54 24 12.0, Magnitudes 10, 11.4, Exposure time: 15s