Observations of Barnard's Star and Ross 128 for Sunday, July 16
Post date: Jul 15, 2017 10:58:29 PM
Figure Above: Sample data for Gliese 436
Introduction
Eight telescope in the world will join efforts on Sunday, July 16, to observe two red dwarf stars, Barnard's Star and Ross 128. Here are the details of the Arecibo Observatory's plans.
General Observation Protocol for Arecibo's Observations
We are measuring radio flux density at frequencies within the C-band 4 to 5 GHz (1 GHz bandwidth) with roughly a frequency resolution of 21 kHz and time resolution of 0.1 seconds. Beam size (field of view) at these frequencies is about 1.0 x 0.9 arcmin.
Observations are done in Full Stokes mode with the Mock Spectrometer (only Mock 1) at seven center frequencies (4148, 4290, 4432, 4574, 4716, 4858, and 5000 MHz) with bandwidths of 172 MHz each divided into 8192 channels.
The typical observation session consists of blocks of 10 minutes ON target followed by 10 seconds ON/OFF diode calibration. Data is recorded using CIMA and analyzed with a custom IDL code (see figure above for sample data product).
Our sessions start by observing a quasar (e.g. 3C263.1 aka B1140+223) for calibration purposes for 3 minutes ON/OFF target with 10 seconds ON/OFF hcorcal (CIMA Standard ON/OFF).
Observations for objects of interest typically consist of n loops (e.g. n = 6 for one hour) of 10 minutes ON target and 10 seconds ON/OFF hcorcal (CIMA Standard ON).
Target #1: Ross 128
Observation Time: Jul 16, 15:45 AST | 10:57 LST | 1.50 hours (Sunday, July 16, 2017, 19:45 UTC)
ICRS coord. (ep=J2000) : 11 47 44.3974 +00 48 16.395
Telescopes: Arecibo, GBT, ATA
Target #2: Barnard's Star
Observation Time: Jul 16, 21:45 AST | 16:58 LST | 1.25 hours (Sunday, July 17, 2017, 01:45 UTC)
ICRS coord. (ep=J2000) : 17 57 48.49803 +04 41 36.2072
Telescopes: Arecibo, SNO, LCO, TJO, CARMENES, ASH2, GBT
Live TeleCon Plans
Skype @ProfAbelMendez with Arecibo, GBT, U. Antioquia
Comments
We considered using S-band too, but it was not used. A previous version of this post had the observation time of Ross 128 and Barnard's Star mixed. Any updates will be posted to this page.
Resources
CALL: AAVSO Alert Notice 587: Observations of FI Vir (Ross 128) needed this week
Questions? abel.mendez@upr.edu or jorge.zuluaga@udea.edu.co