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Post date: Aug 04, 2016 7:16:8 PM
7/28/16
Water: Water level at 22 in.
Weather: Clear skies all night, a few hazy clouds on the horizon, WAY too hot.
Issues: The Dome wouldn't open, like during the 25/26/27 July 2016 trip. We realized that breakers #6 and #7 were tripped. We reset breaker #7, and the dome began to open again (see email correspondance for more details).
We also had some issues with filter alignment. We found that all filter remained aligned, except r and i which were consistently misaligned. We homed the filter, then walked it all the way from HA to each filter and checked misalignment. When we reached r and saw it was misaligned, we homed the filter again before rotating to r. This fixed the misalignment issue, and luckily the r-filter was all we needed for the variable stars so we did not change filter position for the rest of the night. However, we're not confident that this method will reproduce these results later.
We encountered a similar problem with the dome when we closed up for the night. When we plugged in the motor for the upper dome motor, it always tripped breaker #7. The first time it tripped we reset 7, but spark came off the socket and tripped the breaker again. We finally turned off the breaker, plugged in the upper dome motor, then turned on 7. This allowed us to close the upper dome fine. We repeated the process for the lower dome motor. This left a char mark on the upper dome plug. We finished leaving breaker 7 on.
Notes:
-Took test dome flats to align filter wheel, followed by biases and darks.
-Had some trouble pointing the telescope, had to focus to Vega twice before taking science images
-23:30 - 00:00 took images of variable stars. The dome blocked view of these stars until 1:30. After that science images were taken until 3:00
-5:00 dawn flats taken.
7/29/16
Water: Water level at 19 in.
Weather: Clear skies all night, windy.
Issues: We're using a temporary coping method for the current problem with the breakers: We turn off breaker 7 BEFORE plugging in to the socket to open the dome. Once we have finished opening the dome, we then turn off breaker 7 and only then do we unplug the cord for the dome.
The red lights in the computer room aren't working.
Notes:
-Biases, dome flat, and darks taken until 21:00
-Flats taken in the r, v, b, g, i filter.
-Take science images of exoplanet transit CoRoT - 2b, starting at 21:43, in the v filter
-Pointing was accidentally lost at 0:24, telescope was refocused and observations resumed at 0:30 until 1:22.
-Test glamor shots were taken for 10 minutes.
-Variable stars observed from 1:36 until 3:42.
7/30/16
Water: Water level at 12 in.
Weather: Clear skies and windy.
Issues: None!
Notes:
-Dome flats, darks, and biases taken in 1x1 binning for glamor shots (refered to as glamflat, glambias, etc).
-2x2 flat taken only in v.
-Tried to take images of WASP - 2b, couldn't distinguish in finder chart, chose a different exoplanet.
-glamor shots taken until 23:45
-exoplanet transit hatp16b observed in v from 23:50 to 2:46.
7/31/16
Water: Filled tank to 27 in.
Weather: Clear skies, no clouds and way less windy.
Issues: Condenser for the air conditioner was condensing water on the outside, making a medium sized puddle in the water tank room. We're unsure if this happened because the air conditioning had been running for a few days, the water tank had just that day been filled, or if it was sheer coincidence. After 15 minutes the puddle stopped growing, and the leaking stopped for the rest of the trip.
Notes:
-Biases, darks, and twilight flats taken until 21:11
-Variable stars observed from 21:52 to 4:10, with longer breaks between each exposure than the night of 7/29.
8/01/16
Water: Water level at 25 in.
Things to Buy: More plastic utensils (in particular, knives). Do not buy peanut-butter or cream cheese.
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