Seven Years on the ROAD (Remote Observatory Atacama Desert) (Abstract)

Volume 46 number 2 (2018)

Franz-Josef Hambsch

Oude Bleken 12, Mol 2400, Belgium; hambsch@telenet.be

Abstract

(Abstract only) After several tries at different places to set up a remote observatory, the ultimate destination has been found in San Pedro de Atacama at Alain Maury’s place called Spaceobs. Since its start on August, 1, 2011, the Remote Observatory Atacama Desert (ROAD) has produced tons of data due to the exceptional weather conditions in the Atacama dessert. The hardware and software which is used is mostly off the shelf. A 40-cm optimized Dall Kirkham (ODK) from Orion Optics, UK, is the workhorse, riding on a DDM85 direct drive mount from ASA (AstroSysteme Austria). The CCD is an ML16803 from FLI equipped with Astrodon UBVRI photometrical filters. Analysis of the images is done with the lesvephotometry program written by Pierre de Ponthière, an amateur astronomer from Lesve, Belgium. Further software packages in use are maximdl for image acquisition and ccdcommander for automatization. From the start the focus was on pro-am collaborations and a few examples will be highlighted during the presentation. Most of the data are shared with VSNET in Kyoto, Japan, the Centre of Backyard Astrophysics (CBA), USA and several professional astronomers. Also most of those data are accessible from the AAVSO International Database (AAVSO user code: HMB). Related publications with co-authorship can be found on ARXIV using in the search box my last name.