From: stephanie snedden
Subject: Re: 2.5m obslog 20061202 (MJD 54072)
Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2006 21:56:04 -0700
I am not sure I understand the statement in the MJD 54072 night log
that says the Moon was not a problem with plate 8033. Certainly, on
MJD 54071 it WAS a problem, and must have been on the edge of the
2.5m field! Kaike was quite right to not observe the plate. The Moon
was only a little over 2 degrees away from the plate center! Here are
the relevant skycalc results for the plate center coordinates and the
observation time stated in the night log that night:
W Long (hms): +7 03 16.9, lat (dms): +32 46 49, std time zone   7 hr W
Local Date and time: Fri, 2006 Dec  1, time  21 35 00.0  MST
    UT Date and time: Sat, 2006 Dec  2, time   4 35 00.0
Std epoch--> RA:  2 02 39.0, dec: +13 36 20, ep 2000.00
Current  --> RA:  2 03 01.4, dec: +13 38 19, ep 2006.92
Moon:  1 54 00, +14 51.1, alt  71.4, az 196.3; 0.893 illum.
2.8 days until full moon ** NOTE ** Object  2.2 degr. from lunar limb!
Lunar part of sky bright. =  15.7 V mag/sq.arcsec (estimated).
On the subsequent night (MJD 54072), at the same time of night, the
Moon was 13 degrees away from the plate, and although bright, safe to
observe. Perhaps this is what Elena meant to say in the log?
-----
This does raise the issue of calculating the separation from the Moon
on the ET plates. For plates that appear in the Plate Database, we
have the "Zappas" (Moon-Units) displayed and can tell at a glance if
we are too close to the Moon. Unfortunately, the ET plates aren't in
the database. For that reason, I have installed skycalc in /home/
observer/bin. You can run it as observer, or if you put /home/
observer/bin in your path can run it as yourself on 'host2.
Steph
On Dec 3, 2006, at 6:41 AM, elenam@apo.nmsu.edu wrote:
>
> Cart 1 (plate 8033) has large offset and we need to use spiralPattern
> to find fk5 star, it is not the Moon problem.
>