[time-nuts] Re: St Veran gravity red-shift misson

[Magnus Danielson]

Hi all,

Our time here starts to run out. This is bitter-sweet, because it means 
leaving a really nice place with a boatload of new friends, good times 
and for me a whole amount of astronomy I did not expect to see.

After doing the last show for the turists, we have moved the clock and 
batteries over to the observatory car where it will sit over night. 
Power from the house and maintain the choke ring on the top. All to 
minimize the things we need to do tomorrow morning, since we need to 
raise early and then travel down to the village, and then transfer the 
clock back to my car, and then drive across France and into Brussels, to 
move the clock into the Observatoir Royal de Belgique lab.

It's been very eventless here, but things where fixed in the beginning. 
So, you would expect things to be fine... well, just as we loaded the 
clock and locked the car, we saw that one tire is flat, so right now 
work to change the tire. Luckily we have a spare tire. So, the usual 
mess ongoing. Had to unload some, but not too much.

I have tried to use a TICC, logged a lot of data in parallel to the GNSS 
common view, and it turns out that the least square fit is for 
ridicolous litte frequency shift with about 3E-16, so that is probably 
just the same clock looped back. Ah well. The integration works. What 
does not work is signal on ChB so I need to investigate that as I come home.

We have learned immensly by attempting this project, and just finishing 
it we try to use the knowledge.

I'll setup a webpage on my server to describe as much as I can.

The hobby-astronomers have various other background, such as one being a 
math professor, so I showed him my fast least square work, just to see 
what he thought. Kind words was exchanged. Other than that, lots of 
physics, math etc. have been discussed.

Car tire changed, things reloaded. Everything is fine.

Now we prepare for the final night feast.

Cheers,
Magnus

On 2023-07-19 03:06, Christopher Hoover wrote:
> Huzzah!   Yes, please send updates.
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 16, 2023 at 1:41 AM Magnus Danielson <magnus at rubidium.se> 
> wrote:
>
>     Dear Christoffer,
>
>     Many thanks. Yesterday we maanged to drive from Grenoble up into
>     St Veran village, the highest village in Europe. This had me
>     driving mountain roads like nothing I've ever done before, so it
>     was a very intense experience. I even drove through Italy, so the
>     second new country for me to drive in.
>
>     From St Veran village my car was not suitable, as the final climb
>     is on a road which is not very good, so we had to use the
>     Observatory jeep and transfer the clock over to the shock
>     absorber. This is quite an elaborate dance, but thanks to the
>     modularity of the setup where where able to safely transfer it up.
>     We used a small pin-wheel antenna to record the remaining rise.
>
>     At the observatory, I made sure that batteries was recharged
>     before we transitioned furteher. It was quite an elaborate dance
>     to move it up into the lab. We also installed a choke ring antenna
>     on the roof of the observatory.
>
>     I use my Mosaic-T and ORB brought their PolaRx4TR. This provide
>     redundancy, which is good, since we discovered that the cable from
>     the antenna-splitter over to the PolaRx4TR can have a loss of contact.
>
>     Having spare cables and adapters have helped, so we had to be a
>     bit innovative to extend the cable, but I weather secured the
>     extension setup, so we should be fine.
>
>     We maintained the cesium operational from Grenoble. I will
>     investigate when we lost state, but it was before Grenoble, so we
>     should have good data from that, even if Cesium date and time is
>     off, we do not measure that so I can adjust that later today.
>
>     I now go into a clean-up, so start additional loggings I did not
>     managed to start manually because of stress. I aim to make those
>     autostart, it's not hard, but one had to prioritize hard. Power to
>     the cesium is key, GNSS recording operational second, then logging
>     of cesium, environment, PV & batteries further down the line. The
>     key to mission have been achieved. I can clean up the other stuff
>     while here. I want that additional environmental and system
>     logging to work for the rest of the mission.
>
>     So, we have not failed the mission yet. It's not been perfect, but
>     with some clean-up action and experience built, we can improve
>     robustness.
>
>     The Observatoir de Saintt Veran is originally built for
>     Observatoir de Paris, and they used to have two domes in Paris,
>     but the light poultion makes it fairly useless. So, they built
>     this observatory and moved one of their domes up here. Yesterday
>     late, they where walking to that dome saying "Want to see Saturn?"
>     and I just tagged along. It was not the best of days, since it was
>     very windy and that makes the atmosphere more disturbed. But the
>     night sky here is spectacular.
>
>     Another nice thing here is that up here there is a small animal
>     called Marmote. I've never seen one, even in zoo, and on the drive
>     up we could see plenty of them. These are very shy animals, so
>     they run away as we came driving up. However, occasionally they
>     come up to the observatory. Just the other day, one Mermote walked
>     over the observatory keepers foot, not run, but walked. So, we
>     joked that the Marmotes do not fear the scientists. :)
>
>     We where able to come up with the clocks a day early, so we got to
>     interact with the previous mission. Friendly and hospital people.
>     So they shared the reminder of their dinner food, cheese and wine
>     with us. The hobbyist astronomers can apply for one-week missions
>     to Astro Queyras that. Depending on the quality of the mission,
>     they get access to the site for a week, and good mission gets the
>     good weeks, with minimal moon light polution. Normally it is full
>     isolation, but gaining another day of integrating up the frequency
>     error they bent the rules for us, and me and Bruno could come
>     early. We are very happy as we also got to interact with the
>     preivous mission here.
>
>     If there is interest, I can keep sending updates. Yesterday was
>     hectic, so it was not the time to pull out data. That work we can
>     start doing today. I will also do a write-up of the setup if
>     people are interested.
>
>     So, I was given the oppertunity to do this with very short notice,
>     and I jumped on the oppertunity. It's been very stressful and hard
>     work to come to this point, but now I can start to enjoy it. Also,
>     time to share the experience.
>
>     Today will the rest of the total mission come up, I only work on
>     the graviational red-shift mission, but the full mission involves
>     astronomy missions naturally, such as spectroskopy. There is also
>     a documentation side, so things is filmed etc.
>
>     Cheers,
>     Magnus
>
>     On 2023-07-16 06:48, Christopher Hoover wrote:
>>     Best of luck, Magnus.
>>
>>     On Fri, Jul 14, 2023 at 4:04 PM Magnus Danielson via time-nuts
>>     <time-nuts at lists.febo.com> wrote:
>>
>>         Fellow time-nuts,
>>
>>         So, 5 years ago I was asked by Observatoir Royal de Belgique
>>         to take
>>         care of two failed 5071A cesiums and alter them so that there
>>         is one
>>         functioning. I did that, and have operated the functioning
>>         one here and
>>         there, but conservatively, since they wanted to do a mission
>>         with
>>         graviational red-shift.
>>
>>         Since them, other things happen in life, such as Covid,
>>         prohibiting
>>         work. However, a few weeks ago I was contacted as they where
>>         about to go
>>         on the mission. I thought it would be nice to join, as I had
>>         quite a bit
>>         of the things needed for such mission.
>>
>>         Setting it up meeds a number of challenges, as it needs to be
>>         powered
>>         continuously, and over a varity of sources.
>>
>>         In addition I wanted to log as much data as possible. I've
>>         come far on
>>         that point. I log 5071A state and several other environment
>>         sensors into
>>         an InfluxDB and then illustrate with Grafana. Independently
>>         two GNSS
>>         receivers log things for post-processing.
>>
>>         Just assembling the rig for the two 100 W PV panels and a
>>         choke-ring
>>         antenna has been a challenge. Let's just say that I should
>>         not be hired
>>         to do fine mechanics work.
>>
>>         Things have been fixed during the travel, and I have driven
>>         600+1100+800
>>         km just to be in base-camp before final climb. I'm now
>>         sitting in a
>>         borrowed house just outside of Grenoble. I just had to tear
>>         out part of
>>         the equipment, as one of the power converters failed. Luckily
>>         that side
>>         was redundant for the mission, but I do miss one pressure
>>         sensor to
>>         compare the small one with.
>>
>>         I had intended for my passive hydrogen maser to also do the
>>         trip, but it
>>         woke up with an unexpected problem and did not lock, and I
>>         decided it
>>         was not meaningful to bring it's dead weight along. I will
>>         have to
>>         investigate the actual fault. Also, I have been unable to log
>>         the
>>         internal state, which Would have given valuable clues.
>>
>>         Tomorrow we do the final climb to Observatoir de St Veran at
>>         2930 m and
>>         stay there for 8 days.
>>
>>         Connectivity can be sketchy.
>>
>>         In the end of the day, it is only if you try that you can
>>         either fail or
>>         succeed. So far, it has not yet failed completely
>>         catastrofically, but
>>         warnings-signs has gone of and they been managed, so far.
>>         This can still
>>         fail spectacular.
>>
>>         Now I badly need my bed. Being sleep deprived does not help
>>         thinking.
>>
>>         Cheers,
>>         Magnus
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