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Pointing

Still reports of poor pointing have come in. On two occasions during the semester a new pointing model was made, which improved things significantly. On the first occasion a model was calculate from `on-the-fly' pointings (basically regular telescope pointings [made by any observer] which comply to some specific criteria), which do not require any dedicated observations. However, the RMS of this model was not so good as before, and later a model based on dedicated observations was made which showed better results.

The repeated complaints do indicate a problem, and tests have shown that there are deviations in the pointing in both azimuth and altitude which seem to vary with time. Recently we have started a programme to do regular pointing tests to see if we can define the cause for these changes. Unfortunately, up to now most of the technical nights have been affected by very poor weather.



Thomas Augusteijn 2004-01-06