June 2010

Despite a spring blizzard, we made it to our 28 inch f/21 RC telescope at Mt.Evans Observatory in Colorado (14,148 ft elev) and visually inspected epsilon, zeta and eta at low airmass mid-day Tues 6/15/2010.  Brian K and I agreed that eps and zeta were of comparable brightness, after several iterations.  I think eps is slightly fainter than zeta when color differences are taken into account, but that gets subjective under bright sky conditions.  Thus, we report no indication that epsilon Aur is brighter than zeta Aur at this time.  Hence, no evidence for mid-eclipse brightening at this time, but further reports to follow.

With mid-eclipse forecast for early August 2010 and mid-eclipse brightening supposedly lasting +/- 30 to 45 days around that point, we should either begin to see evidence for it soon, or redefine the mid-eclipse light curve.Read more

Greetings from the University of Denver's Meyer-Womble observatory perched atop Mt. Evans, CO.  As Dr. Bob mentioned in his previous blog post, we're preparing the observatory for yet another summer season, this time focusing on daytime observing of epsilon Aurigae.
 
If you are not familure with our observatory, it is located at the 14,128 ft (4,306 meters) level, just past the end of the highest paved highway in the United States, the Mt. Evans highway. This road winds around peaks, skirts along 1,000 - 2,000 ft. drop offs, and is often impassable during the winter months. The observatory is so remote that the closest power pole is nearly 10 miles away as the crow flies, therefore we have a solar power system that generates 1.5 kW of electricity under ideal conditions. Read more