This week's meeting started off with the customary update on the server situation. Upload storage area filled up completely this weekend! We are still working on migrating data between servers so as to most effectively utilize the memory space that we have.

On a brighter note, we’ve also been thinking a lot about what kind of new machine we want to buy with the user donations we have received (thanks again!). Which our chronic memory problem in mind, we have to consider questions like: how much space our indices take? If this new machine doesn’t completely free us from our memory woes—we could cut the size of the database down by a factor of 20 or 10 in order to stop things from running so slowly. Believe it or not, it actually would not compromise the science too much if the database is cut down by a factor of ten.

Currently have a SERENDIP machine (SERENDIP V.v, a single spectrometer) running down at Arecibo. The way SERENDIP works is that it takes data simultaneously with other, already ongoing observations. We have an opportunity to upgrade SERENDIP V.v and make it a more powerful instrument: a 7-beam simultaneous spectrometer. This would allow us to have a much more powerful RFI (radio-frequency interference) rejection—and therefore better data. Should we do it? At the moment, we have our hands on a lot of good, donated hardware. If anything needs to be done to update hardware for Seti@home, now would be a good time to do it.

We are also thinking about doing a survey of the kepler field in conjunction with our colleagues in Green Bank. It would be an exciting opportunity to get to observe this area of the sky that Arecibo can’t quite reach.

A Japanese scientist has come up with the idea to pay homage to Frank Drake by organizing a collaborative effort at telescopes all over the world to observe at the same stars he looked at during the first modern SETI experiments 50 years ago. The collaboration has grown to include about 5 or 6 telescopes. Is this something we want to be a part of? We are going to have a few observation times at Arecibo in October and November— but the question we do have to consider is if the science is worthwhile. Will we get good candidates from these observations? How much time should we ask for? How much time will it take to simply swing the telescope between objects we want it to point at?

That’s all for this week, thanks for checking in!