We had been granted 24 hours of telescope time,
in three 8-hour periods on consecutive days.
An unexpected storm of solar flares cancelled
our 2nd and 3rd observing periods.
Fortunately, the observatory staff was able to shuffle the schedule and
we eventually observed for the full 24 hours.
In the end, we were able to re-observe 155 SETI@home candidates.
We also observed some other interesting places in the sky:
5 extrasolar planetary systems, 35 nearby Sun-like stars,
15 galaxies, and 6 targets from our companion project, SERENDIP.
These observations are of higher quality than usual, because
1) we used Arecibo's main antenna, the "Gregorian dome",
which has a narrower beam and greater sensitivity
than the receiver we normally use; and
2) we recorded in 8 bit per sample resolution in addition
to the usual 2 bit format.
We did a quick "on the fly" analysis of the data;
this didn't reveal any synthetic extraterrestrial signals.
The analysis of the 2-bit data will begin shortly,
using the regular SETI@home screensaver;
we're ironing out some problems with the pointing data.
The analysis of the 8-bit data will be done using a
new version of SETI@home which is under development,
and will be released later this summer.
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