Observed from 25 Sep. 2005 - 21 Jun. 2006

We did mostly AGN Monitoring

New! Webpage with realtime results/timetable

We had no major technical problems

Weather was great! 634 hours of A/B

Observing with the 10m2005 - 2006

Trevor Weekes (for Deirdre Horan)

… that we did not overcome

[Monsoon began]

Available Dark Time: 167 nights

Bad weather

We had 128.5 nights of data and in total got 634 hours of data in A/B

weather

Took Data

Tech.Probs.

128.5 nights

31 nights

7.5 nights

Crab: 108 hr

Mrk421: 150 hr

LSI+61: 85 hr

H1426: 57 hr

Mrk501: 29 hr

1es1959: 51 hr

1es2344: 94 hr

Misc: 60 hr

634 Hours of A/B DataConcentrated mostly on the Crab, 5 Whipple-detected AGN and Microquasar

LSI+61303

Total: 634 hours

Object: Hours

Crab

M421

LSIH1426M501

1es1959

1es2344

Misc.

Results of 10m Observing

• Several people will describe results from the 10m campaigns this year:• Andy Smith

•AGN•LSI+61303

• John Toner•1es2344 & 1es1959

• John Kildea•The 5 Whipple Blazars

Example of Lightcurve

Sept.-Nov. 1es1959+650: Optical data

from A. Sadun, X-ray from ASM and gamma-ray data from

10m.

We will have a lot more data from other telescopes to include here.

60 Hours of A/B “Misc.” Observations

• Data on other targets:• GRBs (4 hours)• Soft Gamma Repeater 1900+14 (10 hours)• ToOs on 10 other Blazars (23 hours)

• Calibration Data:• Zenith runs (22 hours)

• at El. 80º this year

• Pointing runs (12 hours)• Took a lot of 2-min. pointing runs to telescope characterize pointing (see next slide)

• Nitrogen runs

Included in this 60 hours were:

Two-Minute Pointing Runs

• For every target observed each night, a 2-minute “pointing star run” was taken

• In order to do this, the pedestal trigger was increased from the normal 1 Hz to ~30 Hz while tracking the pointing star

• In this way, the pedvars can be used to determine how good the telescope pointing is

• A “normal” pointing check was also done after each target

12 hours of pointing runs were taken this season

We should be able to apply accurate pointing corrections to all data

taken

10m Problems and Fixes

• Tracking … Fixed (see next slide) :-)• HV … Not Fixed :-(

– BUT, not a major problem :-) … yet? :-(

• VME Software Licenses Expired on Taurus :-(– Could not re-compile GRANITE to include new CFD calibration at start of season

• Mirror Alignment looks good :-)Overall, the 10m performed very well this observing

season :-)

Fixing the Tracking Problems

• The Problem: Telescope would occasionally report incorrect El and (more recently) Az values– Intermittent -> hard to fix/debug– Software fix … to minimise impact of problem

• Oct. 2005: problem became persistent– Were able to trace it to a flakey ribbon cable in the mount

– Cable replaced … problem has not returned in El

• May 2006: same problem with Az– Equivalent ribbon cable in mount for Az replaced

Whipple Webpage

• Webpage was updated ~daily• Timetable updated each darkrun and if MWL campaign changed/started• Email sent to collaborators to keep them posted

• Preliminary AGN results posted after each night of observing• Crab rate or upper limit

Whipple Webpagehttp://veritas.sao.arizona.edu/

VERITAS_whipple.html

Links to timetable, lightcurves

and participants

There is a direct link to this page from the VERITAS webpage

Participants: 14 + ASM

Contact TelescopeRadio

I.R.

Optical

All targets on our monitoring list are also been monitored on a daily basis in

X-rays by the ASM

1968 - 2006

As the 10m approaches its 40th Birthday, it is still performing

very well.