Academic CentreStatus of the Project on December, 2011
Both the Imaging device and precision tiltmeter are integrated into telescope assembly. Adjustment of optical components is performed. Assembly is equipped with auxiliary leveling and rotation devices. Test observations are carried out in order to estimate optico-mechanical characteristics of instrument. The first results are promising - even under poor astroclimate, the stars up to 13m can be fixed, ensuring satisfactory number of reference stars practically in any situation. Tycho-2 reference star catalog in this situation turns out to be to insufficient. Therefore a subset of NOMAD catalog for declination band 57+-2 dg and magnitude up to 15m was downloaded and formatted.
Processing the observation data the estimated precision of zenith position appears at the ~0.3" level for a frame. Data processing experience was quite helpful for the further software improvement. More functionality is being added to it.
Work is continued with accurate image timing subsystem. Precision tiltmeter is being prepared for tests.
Theoretical review and research has been made about available software for computation of deflection of vertical. Also research of international publications about achievements has been studied and discussed. With one of selected software determination of vertical deflection has been done. The values from minus ten till plus 7 arcsec have been received. For those points precise geodetic coordinates stay fixed for future exploration or research with some alternative software. Computations we are able to repeat and latter compare with other solutions, when they become available. Also the most important would be to compare results from theoretical computations with results achieved from original observations made by new zenith telescope.