Team Arcs & Declination Run 2 (August 4th - 8th, 2016)
Post date: Aug 05, 2016 7:43:29 PM
8/4/16
We left from UW pretty early (12:35), but did not make it to the observatory until around 5:30 due to a shredded tire in the last stretch of the road.
Water: 24 in. upon arrival
Weather: Clear, spotty small clouds but did not prevent us from opening the dome and did not cause any observational issues.
Issues: add_headers.py was working correctly but giving us a warning:
>>Warning: Image header parameter not found (exposure)
after consulting with the engineering support team and restarting with a new version, add_headers failed to work correctly at all and kept aborting with the error:
>>IRAF task terminated abnormally
>>ERROR (742, "Cannot open device (node!imtool,,512,512)" )
many emails were exchanged but eventually we were forced to work in the raw data directory for the whole night. Oliver has suggested a solution we will try implementing later today. this is not a huge problem because data can still be taken, it will just not be moved to the processed directory. also, since add_headers does not run, there is no way to tell which image in a series you are in, so we had to pay attention to when the Evora exposure bar stopped running.
Notes:
18:58: beginning Evora set-up, previous group left camera on! (and GTCC)
19:15: starting darks
19:17: add_headers.py warning
19:26: we have made contact with the support team and they plan to remotely update add_headers
19:42: we have run into issues with the update of add_headers, it now aborts with the IRAF error
20:07: still issues with add_headers, dome opened, taking biases
20:41: starting test flats in V, 59 k at 0.5 seconds, a good time to start
20:51-21:03: flats
21:01: red light wall button not working, we switched the red cap to the normal light
21:09: setting pointing
21:12: setting focus
21:53: starting observations
starting a new naming convention to differentiate between last run (now rr instead of RR, eb instead of EB)
22:11: the keyboard was leaned on and a black screen popped up that requested a loki login and password, which once entered behaved like a terminal but on the whole screen and would not exit, so we rebooted loki
22:20: everything is fine, continuing on with data collection
23:59: dome is making creaky noises
0:24: everything is too close to the zenith, moving to glamour shots
2:34: back to science targets
~4:00: starting to get too light and losing contrast in fields, warmed the camera and shut down the telescope
8/5/16
Water: 21 in.
Weather: Overall clear but very hazy due to smoke from nearby wildfires.
Issues: No major issues. add_headers.py is working properly!
Evora crashed once. At the time, we were looking at images in ds9 while a series was running. It got 4 images into the 5 image series before it spontaneously crashed, with the Evora window just disappearing. We relaunched Evora and reconnected to the camera and filter with no issues. It then ran as normal with no issues for the rest of the evening.
The smoke haze ended up interfering significantly with our images, resulting in very poor data.
The lights in the control room are still not functioning properly (again switched the red cap to the normal light).
Notes:
19:11: took biases and darks
19:51: took Ha dome flats
20:37: took twilight sky flats (V, g, r, i)
21:54: began observations
22:46: Evora crashed
0:15: variable targets too close to zenith, switching to glamour shots
1:57: back to science targets
3:55: shut down for the night
8/6/16
Water: 19 in.
Weather: Clear, much less haze than the previous night, wind seems to have blown through.
Issues: Evora vanished again, but as before it was easy to pull up and restart again. We also noticed that as our transit target moved into higher airmass, tracking on the target became more difficult and we had to re point the telescope. However, we only had to do this an hour after egress.
Additionally, while focusing, the in button was hit twice so the focus numbers are no longer on the same pattern of 0, 4500, 9000, etc, but since focusing is relative we did not find this to be a major issue.
Notes:
20:19: began biases and darks
20:47: began keeping flats (V, g, r, i)
21:04: calibrated pointing
21:05: calibrated focus
21:23: found field of transit target
21:55: began series exposures on transit target
3:47: finished transit exposures, closed the telescope down
8/7/16
Water: 16 in. Decided to fill it up before we left, filled to 28 in.
Weather:
Issues:
Notes:
8/8/16
Water:
Weather:
Issues:
Notes: