2023 News
July 20 – Twitter Support Ends Twitter has finally abandoned support for long-standing developers and as such the Abbey Ridge Observatory is now no longer a “robots” on Twitter. This was anticipated and some months ago support was added for the non-corporate Mastodon federated social media network. February 20 – Mastodon Support Added We have […]
2022 News
October 25 – New Live Cameras Two new live cameras have been added. These show the outside of ARO and MRO from my office window and the inside of the dome. Both have the IR lighting disabled so won’t see much at night. September 8 – Confirmation of Two New Comets: C/2022 Q2 (ATLAS) and […]
2021 News
October – Observations of Comet’s and Asteroids Confirming observations by ARO observer Filipp Romanov of comets and asteroids were made the past two months, remotely using the ARO: 2021 QA (A10A7uQ name on the NEO Confirmation Page – NEOCP – of the Minor Planet Center): near-Earth asteroid from the Amor group. First observed […]
2020 News
January – ARO is back in full operation – the dead laptop was replaced with a newer one! April 25 – Here is a “movie” of Comet C/2019 Y4 (Atlas) taken at the Abbey Ridge Observatory. Each frame was made from images taken on the nights of April 17/18, 19/20, and 23/24. Each sequence was […]
2018 News
July 2, 2018 – The documentation and installer for the current version of Abbey Ridge Auto-Pilot was updated on the website. June 4, 2018 – Saturday was the 15th anniversary of “first image” for the observatory. The first images taken on the night of June 2, 2002 included M3, NGC 5746, and NGC 4565 and were […]
2017 News
November 11: New 50mm Astrodon BVRI filters where installed in one Optec IFW filter wheel. A second IFW contains LRGB and clear filters. Eventually both filter wheels will be accessible at the same time, but that requires a special driver to be written. March 11: Image processing features were added and all programs synced up with […]
2016 News
December 3, 2016: An amazing new robotic telescope feature goes live today! Images of non-special observations are now tweeted and/or emailed immediately after they are taken! The completed queue is still updated in the morning with the raw data. November 25, 2016: Four new robotic telescope features go live today: three new commands (#domecam, #satellite, and […]
2015 News
December, 2015: ARO is now back operating again after being out of commission since the spring of 2014. Some improvements to the dome shutter have made it more reliable and better able to work in our cold winters!
2013 News
October 31, 2013: Another supernova was discovered at ARO on October 30. 2013. It’s currently known as PSN J18032459+7013306 until its type is determined. It was discovered by Nathan Gray – that makes him the youngest person to discover a supernova! January 2, 2013: I was archiving the 2012 data today from my automated ARO, […]
2012 News
January 1, 2012: I was archiving the 2011 data today and here are the stats. I was able to observe for 115 nights in 2011 and collected 79 gigabytes of data. Maybe 5-10 additional nights lost due to vacation, etc. All of these nights were used for variable star and cluster research for Turner/Majaess, observing campaigns […]
2011 News
March, 2011: ARO joins the University of Calgary’s Quark Nova Project. ARO is leading the search for the theoretical Quark Nova. January 9, 2011: I was archiving the 2010 data and thought I’d report some stats. I was able to observe for 103 nights in 2010 and collected 98 gigabytes of data. Most of January was […]
2010 News
November 2010: ARO was featured in a talk given to the Minas Astronomy Group which meets at Acadia University. May 2010: The observatory was upgraded to include a new 10-position SBIG CFW10 filter wheel with a new Astrocon BVRcIc filter set. The Optec MaxField telecompressor was also replaced with an Optec NextGen WideField, which has […]
2009 News
October 2009: ARO was featured in talks in British Columbia. These included the RASC Centres of Okanagan, Victoria, Vancouver, and Sunshine Coast and a lunchtime talk at the Hertzberg Institute of Astrophysics. June 2009: ARO’s main scope was upgraded from a C11 to a C14. We are now also using SMU’s ST8XME camera with a […]
2008 News
November 4, 2008: Another two papers accepted in the past while based in part on data taken at ARO. So far it has been a good year equipment wise, but the weather was bad mid year – the last couple of months have been better. Feb 4, 2008: In early December, Lionel Catalan of Thunder […]
2007 News
December, 2007: This month I have been observing two high-mass xray binaries (HMXBs) as part of an AAVSO observing compaign for Dr. Gord Sarty. These observations have been challenging as the variations are very small. During this process a new eclipsing binary star was discovered in one of the fields. We are still characterizing it, so […]
2006 News
September 2006: The ARO is now observing variable stars, mainly Cepheids and suspected Cepheids. This work is being done for Daniel Majaess and David Turner of Saint Mary’s University Astronomy and Physics. All observing is done automatically based on observing lists provided by Daniel. They are being given about 2 hours of time each clear […]
2005 News
September 12, 2005: Paul Gray and I are pleased to report that we have discovered another supernova (mag ~16.3) in PGC33662 (a magnitude 15.4 galaxy in Ursa Major), as reported on IAU Circular 8600. It has been designated Supernova 2005ea. April 14, 2005: This past weekend I installed a Boltwood Cloud Sensor. This is a really […]
2004 News
November 27, 2004: November has been a good month too, despite the many cloudy nights when compared to Sept/Oct. The advantage of automation is being able to take advantage of nearly every clear night. Now that the nights are longer, I’m able to image over 500 galaxies per night as part of our supernova search […]
2003 News
December 15, 2003: Not too much is new since September. Other revenue-generating (!) commitments kept me from making any further progress on the automation projects. I did, however, install the new Optec focuser but I had so much trouble getting good flat field corrections that I removed it until I installed flocking paper inside it – this cured […]