Team Arcs & Declination Run 1 (July 14th-18th, 2016)
Post date: Jul 15, 2016 7:46:25 PM
07/14/2016
Water: Water level upon arrival was 21 in.
Weather: Very clear skies, cold, substantial gust of wind at highs of 35 mph. Wind died down by midnight and we were not forced to close the dome at any point.
Issues: Not many, fairly uneventful, we were able to take flats in the late evening. (Started G filter ~21:20). Evora continues to present issues with the filter wheel, giving errors such as "Failed to move the filter". However, the filter wheel audibly turned and was even checked to make sure it was in the correct position. We clicked rotate again, to hear no changes in the wheel--on occasion (~30%) Evora would recognize that the wheel had turned (the first time). Basically, the wheel was in the correct position the first time but we would hit rotate again to be sure-- termed the 'double maneuver'. Every time we checked the field to make sure the filter was in the correct placement and it was, so just ignore these sorts of error messages. There are variations on this.
Notes:
20:45: IRAF session useless to open ds9 and check biases, use pyraf
20:57: too early for g filter
21:12: winds high, about 25 mph in Ellensburg
21:13: black stripe on the left side of TestFlatg version 21:12 is due to illumination patterns and NOT misaligned filter
21:20: g filter flats
21:26: r filter flats (this was a little late, should start relatively earlier)
21:31: i filter flats
22:04: focused at 4500, focus numbers around 1173/4
22:32: telescope in cover position due to wind, resuming observation
22:56: SA 110: J2016.5 RA: 18:44:01.6 DEC: +00:35:40.4
~3:30: Shut down the telescope
07/15/2016
Water: Water level at 17 in.
Weather: Very clear and cold, wind ~7mph, dark rain clouds low on horizon over the mountains to the west.
Issues: Not many, fairly uneventful. Biases, darks, and dome flats were taken starting at 19:25. Twilight sky flats were successfully taken. Evora continues to present the same issues with the filter wheel, continuing to give the "Failed to move filter" message. Each time, the filter wheel audibly turned, "rotate" was clicked again and no changes in wheel position were heard. Same as the previous night, the filter wheel moved into the correct position the first time, clicking rotate a second time resulted in no motion of the filter wheel. Every single time, it was in the correct position the first time, but we did this 'double filter maneuver' each time to double check that the filter was in position. The majority of the time (~70%), the second time clicking rotate resulted in a "Successfully moved filter" message (the other ~30% of the time it resulted in another "Failed to move filter" message, but was still in the correct position).
The moon was also a definite inconvenience, and the moonlight would frequently reflect off the inside of the dome (sometimes directly onto the telescope, but most of the time it did not present a significant problem). We also had a problem with our variable targets being very close to the zenith, which made it difficult to point the telescope without clipping the top of the dome slit. We also encountered a problem where the dome would not rotate to the left with the normal control paddle (this happened twice), but if we moved it to the right and then back to the left, it then worked fine.
At around 02:45, we also noticed that when using imexam, we'd q out and ds9 would open a blank graphics window. This didn't cause any problems, it was just odd.
Notes:
~15:00: New weather sensor successfully installed. Wind detector on roof installed at a slight angle (~10˚) due to where the screws had to be placed.
19:25: Biases and darks taken.
20:02: Dome flats taken. Be sure to double check that the "image type" setting is correct, we took 6 dome flats before realizing it was still set to "dark" instead of "flat".
21:16: Make sure the dome lights are off and everything has been switched to red lights.
21:21: Twilight sky flats taken successfully, it took us 8 minutes total to get 9 flats in each of the three (g, r, and i) filters.
21:43: Focused at 9000.
23:09: Had some problems with some streaking patterns across 10s exposures of EB1 (we took 2, about 2 minutes apart, both displayed a similar pattern). maybe high clouds? moonlight reflecting?? other weird telescope stuff??? aliens???????? we're not entirely sure what caused it, but we switched to a different target. When we came back to EB1 we had no problems.
02:14: Stopped observing the variables for the night (after 4 images of each variable throughout the course of the night), as the targets were too close to the zenith to consistently avoid clipping the top of the dome slit.
03:25: Shut down the telescope.
07/16/2016
Water: Water level at 13 in., filled tank to 28 in.
Weather: Initially mostly clear with high wispy clouds, progressing to more significant clouds.
Issues: The same thing with the filter wheel continued throughout the evening, with it almost always saying "successfully moved filter" after the second time rotate was pressed. We were able to take sky flats in all the filters in the evening. The clouds began interfering with our images and we closed the dome for the night at 0:15.
Notes:
20:26: Ha dome flats taken
21:16: Sky flats taken in all filters (except Ha).
21:41: Focused at 9000.
22:04: Some high wispy clouds.
22:39: Clouds interfering, dome closed.
00:11: Re-opened dome, high clouds began interfering fairly quickly, closed the dome.
01:20: Clouds continued to build up with no sign of moving, shut down the telescope.
07/17/2016
Water: Water level at 24 in.
Weather: Thunderclouds rolled in mid afternoon, began storming hard (rain, hail, thunder, winds) around 15:00. Found about 7 places where the ceiling leaks, including three places in the control room and one in the dome (near the edge of the slit crack, not near the telescope). Everything's been contained and nothing has been damaged, but it should get fixed at some point in the very near future. Sky began clearing up around 19:00 and was completely clear by about 20:40.
Issues: The filter wheel continued to give the same "failed to move filter" message, and clicking rotate resulted in the "successfully moved filter". Twice it displayed the "successfully moved filter" the first time rotate was clicked, and the double filter maneuver was not needed. Also despite the storm in the afternoon, the sky became completely clear and we were able to open the dome and successfully took twilight sky flats. We were able to keep the dome open and be on sky for the entire night.
Bathroom faucets were run for about an hour before they started leaking.
The smoke detector is possibly water damaged (likely from leaking ceiling, water came out when we took it down and removed the battery because it was beeping a lot), but it seems to be working.
At 3:13, telescope stopped moving. It was slewing to target from GTCC, one of the telescope control buttons on the paddle in the dome was accidentally pushed, telescope then refused to move. Slew to target wasn't even an option, we tried clicking precess, park scope, cover position, halt all motion, slew to vega. Two of the three LEDs under the telescope were red. Turned off the telescope. Turned off camera. Telescope turned back on. All three LEDs green. Hand paddle moves the telescope. Telescope manually moved to zenith and re-pointed. Telescope then worked fine. Shut down the telescope.
Notes:
21:17: Sky flats taken in all filters (except Ha).
21:47: Focused at 9000.
23:08: Some unusual streaking in the image, but no clouds. Moved to next target and the streaking went away.
23:47: Variable objects very close to zenith, switched to glamour targets.
00:19: Back to variables.
00:55: Variables too close to zenith, clipping top of dome slit.
01:34: Some of the variable targets completely blocked by the top of the dome.
01:42: Moon and clouds interfering with images, not good for photometry, switched to looking around at possible glamour targets.
03:09: Went back to variables.
03:13: Telescope stopped working, see the issues section for more details.
03:52: Shut down the telescope.
07/18/2016
Water: Water level at 17 in. This is after letting the bathroom faucets run for over an hour.
Things to buy: Low on canola oil (still plenty of olive oil), coffee if you don't want Folgers, Swiffer (unless you can find the one that's supposedly here already, we can't find it). Good for the rest of the basics.