In Search of Collaboration

The University of Illinois at Springfield observatory has been observing Eps Aur since it came out from behind the Sun last July until last month when it dipped too low in the West a sunset.  We have observed Eps Aur about every two weeks over that time span using our Echellete spectrograph on our 20-inch telescope.  The spectra covers a range from 415 nm to 970 nm at an R = 20,000 and reasonably good S/N.  I've noted that other people are working at high dispersion but have either focused on a narrow band of wavelength around H-alpha or K I -or- are not observing as frequently as we are.  So we are filling a spectroscopy niche for the Eps Aur event that I have not seen anyone else claiming to fill.  

We are thinking about publishing our data for the ingress of the eclipse this summer but wondered if there are any other spectroscopy groups out there with similar plans who are interested in working together on one big paper rather than several smaller competing papers.  Send me email at jmart5 _at_ uis.edu if you are interested in a collaboration.

A little about us.  The University of Illinois at Springfield is the smallest of the three campuses in the University of Illinois system.  Our campus aspires to become a top public liberal arts university.  We run a community funded and supported research observatory with the help of several volunteer citizen astronomers who have taken graduate-level astronomy courses.  Our public web site for the research observatory is:  https://edocs.uis.edu/jmart5/www/barber/index.html