| Date | Benchmark |
| December 9, 2004 | PAIRITEL has begun an observing campaign on the new X-ray binary IGRJ00291+5934, which went into outburst a few days ago. Reports from the first set of images on Dec 8 and Dec 9 were reported in Astronomer's Telegram #363. |
| October 20, 2004 | PAIRITEL
commissioned. At 2004-10-21 01:55:38.495735 UT (6:55 PM, Oct
20), the family of the late Jim Peters pressed "Go" on the script to start PAIRITEL, thus
offically beginning the project. Though the night was cloudy, spirits
were high as the telescope managed to lock on to a pointing star and
observe the scheduled science targets, autonomously. The
commissioning, attended by about 15, was a grand affair, a wonderful
start to an exciting project.
The future of robots looks bright, this according to a detailed economic report issued TODAY by the United Nations today ("UNECE Predicts Robot Explosion"--PC Magazine). |
| October 12-13, 2004 | First remote observing from Cambridge, MA. Many objects were observed including the bright supernova SN2004et. Click here (PS.GZ) for a snapshot. Snapshot of web-based status window. |
| October 5, 2004 | Work begun by Cullen Blake to hone the PAIRITEL Low-mass Star Transit (PLMS) Search, to find Earth-mass planets around small stars during the commissioning phase this fall. This project will help test the short- and long-term photometric stability of PAIRITEL. |
| Sept 12-17, 2004 | Josh goes to the National Virtual Observatory summer school and starts a VO transients working group (rtvo.net). PAIRITEL will be an early adopter. Also, automated LN2 fill report put on-line. |
| Sept 1-12, 2004 | Total systems integration almost there! See the real-time live status updates (status.pairitel.org). Master observe demon now interfacing to the scheduler and weather monitor along with interrupts for GRB events (about 1 minute from trigger to first images!). Zenith pointing robust to better than 30 arcsec, and point check algorithm now makes use of the 2MASS catalogue to get sub-pixel accuracy in pointing. Photometric stability over several nights looks to be better than 3% for unsatuated stars. |
| June 7-12, 2004 | A major push on all systems. Installation of opto-interruptors for zenith finding. First working version of the scheduling and database management software have been completed by Cullen. |
| May 2004 | The PAIRITEL project, together with SMARTS on southern 2MASS telescope at CTIO, has been awarded funding from the Swift Guest Investigator Cycle 1 program! |
| May 2004 | Listsev created at yahoo.ptel. Post messages to ptel (at) yahoogroups.com or the website here (restricted access). |
| March 2004 | Working versions of the TCS and camera interface in Linux now completed. Dome automation is progressing. A dome open-close decision maker has now been written by Dan Starr and is being tested. |
| January 2004 | Project renamed the "Peters Automated Infrared Imaging Telescope" (PAIRITEL), in memorium of Jim Peters, a long time telescope operator at the 60 inch telescope on Mt. Hopkins. This project website is www.pairitel.org, with a quick link to the weather station via weather.pairitel.org |
| mid-October 2003 | Cabling, Balancing, Pointing Checks and the "Smoke Test". A great leap forward for the project. |
| 21 August 2003 | Data pipelining is progressing. Example images and movies (!) taken in the lab in Virginia can be found here. |
| 7 July 2003 | The camera was successfully mounted to the telescope today! Click here for a picture. |
| 20 June 2003 | All the 2MASS electronics and cabling are now in the 2MASS dome with the cabling on. The dewar is scheduled to arrive on in three days. Also, electronics arrival at the CfA. |
| 16-18 June 2003 | Creation of a web forum and work log and events calendar for project participants. Updated to do pages. |
| 16 June 2003 | Got DOS-based data taking code to work (fully) under Linux/dosemu-1.1.5. See some screenshots of the Real-Time Display Mode, SCRIPT menu, dark data taking, and dark scan start screen. We also got xdosemu to run remotely through SSH X-forwarding (non-trivial). The data-taking card has not yet been tested running under Linux. |
| 2-3 June 2003 | Purchased (and shipped) solar power components. |
| 27-30 May 2003 | On-site checkout of the instrument and data-taking computers in Virginia (Andy, Mike, and Josh). Ship date scheduled for the second week of June. |
| February 13 2003 | The weather station has arrived and we're now creating a regular web page update of "weather" information in JSB's office. |
| January 7 2003 | Created a short-term to do list. Added a Picture Page with close ups of the hardware that we will be automating. |
| December 18 2002 | Grant from the Milton Fund awarded to JSB. The one-year grant of $32.8 k begins January 1, 2003. |
| December 3-6 2002 | JSB visited the 1.3m site. Drew up some notes on the existing setup and hardware necessities based on conversations with Wayne and Craig. |
Last modified: Thu Dec 9 14:40:06 EST 2004
