Mike Simonsen is going out on November 13 to remove W28, W30 and BSM from Astrokolkhoz. Mike is taking BSM to Bill Stein's observatory near New Mexico Skies. W30 is relocating to Bill Goff's observatory in northern California. It will be refitted with the STL1001E camera that was on K35, and populated with B,V,Rc,Ic,g,r,i,z filters. Both of those telescopes should be up and running fairly quickly. While Mike is out in California dropping off W30, he will be stopping by Bob Stine's observatory to give him a hand with BSM-CA.
W28 is most likely going to Lowell. There is a small rolloff there that can be used, but it needs automation. I hope to work on it a little in December, but it may be off of the air until early next year. If someone in Arizona wants to host it and can get it up earlier, let me know ASAP and we'll take your site into consideration. W28 is on a field tripod and so relatively easy to get going.
I'm currently working with Jon Holtzman on TMO61. This 24-inch telescope near Las Cruces is performing quite well, but there are a few nagging issues, mostly dealing with software. If I had a week to finish it, we'd be on the air quickly, but it may have to wait until I get back from New Zealand around Thanksgiving.
Speaking of New Zealand, I will be out to work on OC61, the 24-inch at Mt. John, during Nov 16-23. Dirk Terrell will give me a remote hand, and we hope to have that system running by the end of the week. Wish me luck!
Arne
What happened to
Arne,
What happened to K35? I was getting images from this scope during May and June but have received nothing since the monsoon ended.
Bob
Both of these telescopes are no longer part of the network. These were personal telescopes of Tom Krajci, loaned to AAVSOnet. When he asked us to remove the AAVSO telescopes from his site on October 16, he also shut off access to K28 and K35. In addition, he had not yet restarted K35, a month after the monsoon ended, and so there has been no new data with that system since June.
The programs that were on those two telescopes are being consolidated and moved to other telescopes. It will be a month or two until these changes are made. We apologize to the researchers about this lapse in their programs, over which we had no control.
Arne