dpv

Final report of the first season of Stars Above Ponta do Sol

16/08/2020 by dpv

The pandemy of the new coronavirus gave me the possibility to extend the season from planned two months to more than half year period.

Many astronomical activities were performed between 11/01/2020 and 31/07/2020 on Madeira island. In the following I summarize activities with my personal participation as a representative of the Observatory and Planetarium M.R. Stefanik in Hlohovec, Slovakia and a member of Associação de Astronomia da Madeira. Step by step history of this stay can be found on https://www.facebook.com/stars.above.pontadosol.

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May 2020 – still in Madeira

12/05/2020 by dpv

The winter stay became the spring one. However after many clear nights in April only one in May until now. We had spectacular green flash on 1st of May (see astro-gallery ), then practically nothing special.

In the meantime new section appeared in this web. In Photogrammetry – you can find several 3D reconstructions of objects typical for madeirian architecture.

On 30 of April the project proposal MADASTRA was submitted to FCT. Now waiting for the approval. If successful can be a big milestone in the development of observational astronomy in Madeira. The plan is to put in operation two small optical telescopes. The existing one 12″ Meade telescope on the terrace of the University to perform spectroscopic observations. The new 14″ will be installed on Achada do Teixeira (1590 m asl) and used for photometric observations.

YY Her

12/05/2020 by dpv

Nice example of co-operation of visual and electronic observations. YY Her is symbiotic variable showing periodic variations connected with the orbital motion. Porb = 589.5 d. Sometimes the outbursts occurs. See the long term light curve below:

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Madeira 2020

10/02/2020 by dpv

Another winter stay in the island of eternal spring. Between 10. January and 12. March 2020. Two main objectives:

To put the University Meade LX200 telescope in operation.
To start up the local astronomical community in Ponta do Sol

You can follow the process on https://www.facebook.com/stars.above.pontadosol/

The adventure continues after 12 of March because of the virus. We are still on the island performing observing sessions and preparing project proposal “MadAstra – Reviving the Observational Astronomy on Madeira”. Just a preliminary summary can be found in the traveling section.

Recurrent nova V3890 Sgr

18/12/2019 by dpv

Although the low declination the 2019 explosion of this recurrent nova was observed intensively with low resolution spectrograph on Celestron C11″ telescope. Below are examples of our spectra and all low resolution spectra collected in ARAS database. The result was presented at the Telč conference by Francois Teyssier.

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MU Cam – orbital sidebands

18/12/2019 by dpv

Long term monitoring of intermediate polars is performed as a part of the InterLongitude Astronomy campaign. High quality and long time series observations allow us to investigate fine effects on complex light curves. In
the case of MU Cam we have investigated the periodic modulation of the spin phases with the orbital phase. This dependency was already described by Kim et al. (2005). As an explanation they proposed inhomogeneous accretion flow from the secondary. However based on our new data we can propose simple explanation as the influence of orbital sidebands in the periodic signal produced by intermediate polar. This explanation is supported by the fact that the changes in spin maxima phase are observed mainly when the sideband frequency is dominant in the periodogram. This result was presented on conferences in Bezovec and Telč.

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