Three_C

The selection highlight bar is on item 1 (Telescope Control). Selecting item 1 will hide the Main Menu and bring up the following horizontal menu:

Main Menu - Telescope Control

Main Menu - Telescope Control - Integrate

This menu item begins an integration with the photometer. You will see the operations function in the status screen change to Integrating and the word Counting appear just below Right Pmt in the status screen. At the end of each counting second the resulting counts in each channel will be displayed. Each one second counting interval is actually composed of one hundred intervals of 10 milliseconds each. At the end of IntLen number of one second integrations, the observation is complete. If no data I/O devices have been accessed, a window will appear in the data area. Three I/O devices can be directly controlled. You will be asked whether you wish data to be sent to the hard disk (D), the screen (C), or the printer (P). If you want a particular device, simply press the key for it (either D, C, or P) when you are asked. If you do not wish a particular device, press ESC when you are asked for that device. Make sure that the printer is turned on and is online before selecting it.

Integrations can be aborted during execution by pressing ESC. The observation is not recorded.

The Data Record

A typical data record (recorded in identical form on any of the I/O devices) is

025135 = the Universal Time (hhmmss) of the end of the integration
V = the filter code (C for clear, U for ultraviolet, B for blue, V for visual)
C = the object code (C for comparison, V for variable, or S for sky)
05 = the length of the integration in seconds (current limit is 60 s)
12345678 = the total counts accumulated in the integration interval
1.5 = the standard error of the observation using the one second counts as the basis
c = the error code (c for clear, s if the standard error exceeds 2% of the mean, or p if the integration differs by more than 4% from the previous observation of the same star through the same filter).

All data are recorded (except those for which the standard error exceeds 4%), so that the file may need to be edited before reduction. The disk file is stored in the c: drive under a subdirectory which is the name of the variable star in a file which is the name of the night with an extension which indicates the telescope, vis., c:\v356_sgr\aug05.d41.

After completing the integration, three_c selects the next filter from the observing program (see below under Telescope Functions II). If the next filter is different, the filter wheel will turn to it. If no change is required, the next integration begins immediately.