Live blogging on KOI 256b Transit

UPDATE #10 13:00 UTC
Data uploaded to TRESCA ETD. All in all a fine nights work. The transit occurred earlier than the prediction as we have previously noticed - Thanks to Eugene at Pulkovo Observatory. One pleasing aspect I managed to lift my DQ from 5 to 4 (Data Quality factor).

The predicted mid-point was 2455723.828 TRESCA modelling of the actual mid-point was 2455723.8167.

Good night! Live Blog Ends.

UPDATE #9 12:30 UTC
Data processed about to upload to TRESCA database.


UPDATE #8 11:10 UTC
The brief sharp dip just after the egress corresponds to the images immediately either side of the Meridian Flip. I'll take those outliers out of the finished data. Sometimes before/after a mid image run meridian flip, the scope will slighly mistrack and takes a minute or two to get back into its rythmn.


UPDATE #7 10:50 UTC
The run on the scope has nearly finshed, only three images to go. I have run the data so far through a rough photometery seq, we can clearly see a beautiful transit. Now for the data processing and upload to TRESCA.

UPDATE #6 10:00 UTC
Riversong enters the fray, after Rory's brave stand ...Riversong is Amy's Daughter (spoiler alert), ah I should have written that first....ah well the timelines have been mixed.... ah back to the important matters at hand the egress has been detected. Note: this is still raw data

UPDATE #5 09:10 UTC
The signal to noise is higher tonight as desired.


UPDATE #4 09:00 UTC
Whilst the actual transit has now passed about 30 mins ago the Data is now coming in from the server. After 40% of the run is completed we can clearly see our little friend has indeed passed in front of the Parent star. I am yet to get a reading on the ingress and mid transit time - Later ;-) once we have some more data.



Update #3 8:30 UTC
For those of you asking how the The "Rockling poached in Lemon Grass, Fennel, Mirin, and white wine turned out? D E L I C I O U S!!! [OK, some of you are starting to suspect this is a shameless plug to drive up traffic on my blog.] Seriously... the world is about to stop as our family seeks answers to Riversong's fixation with Dr Who.


UPDATE #2 07:20 UTC
The predicted ingress was 07:14 UTC so the transit should be well under way. We are about 1/3 into the run as the scope has imaged 30 x 120 sec exposures already. These are yet to start downloading to the VPHOT server but should do so soon.


UPDATE #1 06:30 UTC
The run is underway. We are starting well ahead of the transit time tonight so we have a good stable light curve before the transit. A beautiful night! Looks like the moon is not causing any dramas for us.



It's the weekend, and a long one. Thanks to the celebration of the House of Windsor's most senior stateperson's birthday, which ironically is NOT today, nor in fact on Monday either, however celebrated none the less by those uncooperative convicts shipped out 200 years ago. ;-)

The most important person in the house is writing reports, two are studying and one is 27 chapters into Septimus Heap, which had to be purchased before rapid closures of book stores, because apparently there are too many iPADs and eBook readers in the world.

So I thought what else does one do, well there are 8 Kepler Objects of interest transiting every hour today (not all reachable by me.....but some are). So time to roll up the sleeves and make sure I am pulling my weight!!!

I am on kitchen duty as well, so between poaching (as in a frying pan, not from someones private river) a beautiful fillet of Rockling (white fleshed fish) in Mirin, fennel, dill and white wine, I will be doing a live blog for the next three hours on the transit of KOI 256b.

KOI 256b is a very interesting member of the Kepler Objects of Interest (1235 publically published list of transit candidates from the Kepler Space Telescope). It is a very interesting object as its transit is "somewhat" synchronous with its Minima of the variation of its parent star's brightness.

Its a good target (~17mmag) shallow enough to make you carefully plan your run and exposure times, and has the shortest duration of any of the published transit list. So that makes it interesting as you don't have to sit up half the night / or in my case half the afternoon (ah the joys of remote armchair astronomy).

I booked my reservation on GRAS G11. We'll be doing 100 x 120sec images on the target. I did a run last week (60 sec images) and the signal to noise ratio on the target averaged about 63, which was a bit low, for my liking so today I'll go with 120 Sec exposures.

The Pulkovo Observatory and a couple of other amateurs are following this object and I think we have come across some interesting things, so we are working closely to compare our notes, and increasing our data coverage of this little fellow.

Remember as an amateur astronomer I'm not qualified to say "Why" & "How" things happen, I just confine my comments to "What", and "When". The run is under way and Updates will now occur at the top of the Blog. Thanks for joining us for this special event.

When you wish upon a star

Welcome. This week has been characterised by some fairly average weather. Those of you tuning into Australia's premier football event around the world this afternoon will see plenty of our famous Melbourne weather on show.

Weather can have an impact on an observing campaign, so there have been some challenges in obtaining some of the data I have been chasing this week. I am getting great positive feedback on the blog - largely because I am blogging on my observations.

So this week, given the weather, I thought it would be good to talk about observation campaigns. This week I have barely jagged a couple of short sessions on
V4743 SGR and some of the surrounding variables in the same field. V4743 Sgr is also referred to as Nova Sgr 2002c making it an object of some interest, given its nova outburst in 2002. Over 200 observers have contributed to the AAVSOs lightcurve.



So what is it that makes an object "interesting"? Clearly a Nova outburst is something that is interesting, as professional astronomers are quick to follow up with highly accurate spectroscopy. The advantage of having amateurs "on their toes" and participating in regular campaigns is that professional astronomers can't afford to have billion dollar telescopes pointed at stars, waiting for years, for something to happen. (The hubble deep field shot is a noteable exception...but a deliberate experiment to look at nothing to see if something WAS there)

A good example of leveraging the skills of amateur astronomers is my data here on QU Sgr. This is a Mira variable star of little or no interest to anyone.....but who knows one day it may be significant or do something. If that ever happened, what would we have to compare it with? So whilst gathering some data on V4743 with my set up which has a fairly large field of view, it is important to grab a couple of readings on any other Variables in the field, as other observers are unlikely to ever go specifically to QU Sgr to collect data.



There are a plethora of variable stars requiring regular observations and a limited number of observers. Today we have the fantastic use of social networking, blogs, forums and membership of organisations such as AAVSO. In this environment connected communities of dedicated amateurs have organised campaigns based on a prioritised list of "interesting objects".

Rod Stubbing who discovered this months outburst of VX For was working through a carefully targeted list of variables that were "in season" ie at an optimal position in the sky for observing. Rod indicated to me it was his first observing session on VX For for the year. So you never know what you will find, and how many other people who are observing.



So I leave you this week with the completely insignificant Mira Variable QU Sgr that noone else has reported on for over 4000 days.

VX For Dwarf Nova Outburst .....update#2

The variable Star community is alive with excitement after Rod Stubbing an amateur astromomer from Victoria Australia discovered VX For in outburst for the first time since 1990.

After a 19 year spell the Dwarf Nova has moved into outburst. Importantly Rod appears to have caught it before its previous peak of 12.5 in 1990.



I was able to get some photometery on VX For and reported confirming data on Rod's exciting find to the AAVSO.

Mike Simonsen has written an excellent blog on this star with some of the history and the significance of the event. I imagine professional astronomers will be keen to get some spectroscopy on this interesting star in over the next month.



My observations were just a short run last night as the window is fairly tight from about 11:30Pm local time through to about 4:30am. The co-ordinates also restrict viewing to southern observers: RA 03:26:46.9 Dec -34:26:37.0 so our northern friends will have to leverage any access they can get to southern hemiphere scope......its called teamwork! Also Joe at the Center for Backyard Astrophysics is following the story with interest and rallying the troops!

Anyway it promises to be an exciting time as VX For entertains us for the coming weeks. My first light curve showed it right on the 13.0 magnitude observed the previous night by Rod Stubbing. Amateur Observers can post their results to the AAVSO.



Enjoy! I will post any further updates, you can also follow the light curve here as it develops.