Maser musings...

[Steve Olney]

One thing that struck me whilst trawling for maser info, was that many reasonably strong ones have only been observed a few times - or maybe even just once. In addition often the last observation occurred decades ago - even if observed a number of times.  While this is an impediment to the amateur trying to determine whether a small dish would receive them as they may have faded away by now - on the flip-side it occurs to me that there is an opportunity for an amateur to set up an automated observation program of a selection of them and monitor them for any flares.  Flares events for any one maser might be spaced many years apart - so monitoring a group of, say, 5 to 10 might reduce the time between an observed flare. This leverages the one advantage we have over the pros - time and the ability to dedicate an observing system to just one purpose.

Steve O

[Eduard Mol]

I do not think there would be any scientific value in such an amateur observing program for masers. There is already the M2O (maser monitoring organization,

https://www.masermonitoring.com/

) performing daily observations on more than a thousand masers. As far as I know most of their data just is not publicly available.

Nevertheless it could still be a fun and interesting project…

Op ma 6 mrt. 2023 om 22:39 schreef Steve Olney <hawkr...@gmail.com>

One thing that struck me whilst trawling for maser info, was that many reasonably strong ones have only been observed a few times - or maybe even just once. In addition often the last observation occurred decades ago - even if observed a number of times.  While this is an impediment to the amateur trying to determine whether a small dish would receive them as they may have faded away by now - on the flip-side it occurs to me that there is an opportunity for an amateur to set up an automated observation program of a selection of them and monitor them for any flares.  Flares events for any one maser might be spaced many years apart - so monitoring a group of, say, 5 to 10 might reduce the time between an observed flare. This leverages the one advantage we have over the pros - time and the ability to dedicate an observing system to just one purpose.

Steve O

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[Steve Olney]

Hi Eduard,

I guess it depends on the definition of scientific value.  Despite the Vela pulsar probably being one of most regularly looked at pulsar I was able to add some useful information about a couple of glitches.

If at the beginning I had looked at the extensive pro observations of Vela and decided not to bother I would have missed out on a lot of fun !!!

Sure - that effort didn't have the quality of the following pro investigations - but at least it brought attention to what we amateurs are capable of.

I believe during one of the recent down-under SARA zooms there was mention that the pros at Parkes are keen for an amateur radio astronomy group in South Australia to get involved with observing masers.  There must be a reason for that.

But - yes - you are right - amateurs are generally not able to 'compete' against the pros - but it's fun trying and interesting as you say.

Cheers

Steve O

[Marcus D. Leech]

On 07/03/2023 04:38, Steve Olney wrote:
>
> But - yes - you are right - amateurs are generally not able to
> 'compete' against the pros - but it's fun trying and interesting as
> you say.
>

100% agree.    You learn a lot, develop new skills, and feed your
curiosity.  Sounds like a darn good reason to do this to me...

The optical astronomy hobbyists have a small (tiny) advantage in being
"scientifically relevant" -- in particular comet hunting.