What's New - July 1998 What's New - July 1998
The last couple of months have been fairly busy for everyone. The 1998 PLANET observing season is well underway and we have many observations already. John Greenhill recently gave a report on the progress to the 1998 Astronomical Society of Australia annual meeting in Adelaide in July, which was very well recieved.
At present we are doing some photometry on a new X-ray transient source, XTE 2123-058. This source is thought to have an orbital period of almost a day or some fraction (latest estimate is 5.957 +/- 0.003 hr; IAUC 6972). It looks as though we may have some good data during eclipses; processing of this data is currently underway. Additionally the regular monitoring of GX 1+4 continues and we anticipate a paper being submitted based on the recent observations of the millisecond pulsar SAX J1808.4-3658 = XTE J1808-369.
On the equipment side, the new camera was hooked up to the telescope for the first time earlier this year and the results were a dramatic improvement on the ST6. Unfortunately the camera has since been removed for some more work and currently we are continuing observations using the ST6 camers.
The upgrading/automation of the telescope proceeds at a rapid pace. Recent additions include:
And finally the observer's notes are now available on-line.