Observational Results from Mount Stony Brook Observatory

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Session 3 -- Instrumentation and Techniques I: Ground Based
Display presentation, Monday, June 12, 1995, 9:20am - 6:30pm

[3.02] Observational Results from Mount Stony Brook Observatory

J.Petreshock, S.Wolk, N.Adams, F.Walter (SUNY SB)

The Mount Stony Brook Observatory consists of a recently upgraded 0.35m Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope instrumented with several CCD cameras. Mt. Stony Brook, located on the Stony Brook campus, in a maritime environment approximately 40 miles East of New York City suffers from poor seeing and a bright sky. However, it offers one major advantage over larger telescopes: availability.

We will describe the telescope and instrumentation. We currently use the observatory mainly for determining stellar rotational periods. We will present the results of observations of W Ursae Majoris, an eclipsing contact binary, and FK Comae, a rapidly rotating variable, which confirm our photometric accuracy as well as our period sensitivity. In addition we will be present a new rotational period for the naked T Tauri star TAP 26. TAP 26 was monitored for over 5 months in an attempt to confirm either the 2.51 day period (Bouvier et al. 1993) or the 13 hour period determined by Prosser et al. (1994). We report a 0$^{d}$.715 rotational period and discuss which of the 3 reported periods is likely to be correct.

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