Science Report
March 31, 2008
Guerric de Crombrugghe

Scientist report - astronomy
Good news : the radiotelescope is fixed! The guides were down, and some
connections between the dipoles and the coax cable were seriously
damaged. We had to do a little bit of soldering, protect with tape, and
straighten the guide. It appears that the inner insulating material of
the coaxial cable is not UV-resistant. This was done out of sim.

Thanks to Peter Detterline's instructions we found the Jove Receiver and
the speaker. The processing software ran slowly on the observatory
computer (the yellow one), so I installed it on my laptop. It works
much better; we are now getting something. I will have to read some
manuals to know what is this "something" (galactic background level +
sun ?) and be familiar with the software. The variable resistance of
the volume of the Jove Receiver seems to be damaged. This is not really
a problem for the moment.

Next step : reading manuals, and training on observations. Jupiter is
rising tommorow at 2:27 am and will be in the sky till 11:57 am,
according to a sky ephemeris software. We will thus try to listen to
the giant planet (before and after sunrise).
I hope we will have everything under control for Monday, April 7, as
there is a jovian storm planned for then.

It is still too windy to use the observatory. We found the Astronomy
Boxes #2 and #3 (containing the STV, and the Philips ToUCam) when we
were cleaning the Hab.