Good afternoon all,
I’ve chosen to start modernizing and updating the website, clearing out broken links and streamlining the observing tools. Hopefully you’ll find it easier to read and navigate the website!
I’m also working on posting weekly posts here so that the “dynamic status” of the RCT is archived through these posts.
Cheers,
Maxx
A note on JPL horizons and non-sidereal requests
There is a bug in the RCT scripts that occurs when parsing names with white spaces from the JPL Horizons ephemeris service. I’m still working on robust solutions. You may try putting quotes around your object names, like “C/2011 L1”. But I recommend looking up targets on http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi to generate a Object Data Page, and using either the Record Number (indicated by Rec #: xxxxx in the east jump upper left hand corner) or the MB number (in the upper right hand corner) as the object name in the IsPlanet key on the RCT Observing Scheduler.
Blank images?
Several images the last few nights are blank. I suspect the dome encoders are off, and have re-homed the encoder. Please send comments if your images are still eastyl blank.