LBT OSU/RC Queue Observing: UTC 2008 March 11

Observers: Rick Pogge, Peter Garnavich, Jose Prieto
TO: Randy Grashuis
AA: Marco Pedani

Summary: 

We had a number of LBC GUI problems tonight, the first when running the second flat sequence. 
In total we lost ~1 hour to the instrument during the night. We got good subarcsec seeing
(»0.7 arcsec) during part of the night, so we tried part of the ND cosmos snsearch program and 
one of the OSU weaklensing clusters. The OBs for the weaklensing program seem to be wrong
and we sent an email to the PI (Paul Martini) to correct them. We took a couple of exposures
of the UVa LeoI program, however, Regulus is very close to the field and produces severe 
scattered light in the field. Rick sent an email to the PI to see if we should get more images
for the program in another night. 

Programs observed: 
 OSU monitor dailies for M82, M81 and M101
 OSU weaklens MAX8 
 OSU/AZ Kuiper, completed UT11
 NDqso, completed field 146848a
 GRB1

UT 00:10
- Started taking 25bias OB
- Biases done at 00:23 

UT 1:44 
- Slewed to sky flat position, taking UsZ flats .. starting with 1s
- After UsZ we go to do rr test flats 
- We have problems with LBC starting the rr test flats .. a message saying there is an 
LBC controlled problem comes up, and after trying about five times, images don't 
appear in Repository. Turn off/on the LBC .. and it still doesn't work, Marco is looking at it
- After rebooting the archive server machine and turn off/on the camera, images appear .. UT 02:32 
.. lost 30min

UT 02:40 
- Taking focus images in flatfield position .. big focus steps in red and blue sides
- -1500 Z7 in red works pretty good .. after three iterations we get good focus 

UT 02:48 
- Moving to M82 focus field .. the focus is way out, strangely, and we have to do a big focus change in blue (~3000 units) 

UT 03:04
- Started integrating 
- Seeing is 1.5 arcsec in R, out of focus in blue V
- Seening getting worse as we take images (~1.8 arcsec), definitely looking through clouds 
- Taking second OB due to clouds 

UT 03:26 
- Moved to M81 focus field .. converged on focus after three iterations 
- Started running the science OB at 03:33
- Seeing 1.2 arcsec in B and 1.7 arcsec in R

UT 03:45 
- Moving to Kuiper belt 11UT OB .. converged after three focus iterations 
- Started OB at 03:57
- Seeing is 1.3 arcsec in the first R band image 
- Seeing is 1.0 arcsec in R, 5th image in second OB 
- Seeing getting better in the execution of the last OB, 0.8 arcsec in R, 
very good seeing (~1.0 arcsec) in the seeing monitor.
 
UT 06:00
- Moved to VA LeoI OB BR3 .. get good focus after two iterations 
- Started OB at 06:02 
- Images look awful because Regulus is just off the field, and there is a huge 
scattered light halo. We give up with this for tonight because the images look too
bad, the PI should take a look at them 

UT 06:30
- Moved to Cosmos field to snsearch, nice focus after two iterations 
- Started OB with scaling 0.5 exptime to look at the z-band zeropoint. 
- First image looks bad, so changed the offset by -0.10 .. seeing looks very good now 0.7 arcsec
- Started science OB .. we get a crash of LBC when running the first image
- LBC crashed two times .. CCD controller error 

UT 07:07
- Started OB again 
- Seeing is 0.8 arcsec in z-band and stars to get worse in the following exposure (0.8-1.1 arcsec).

UT 08:02 
- In the second OB of cosmos field and focus degrades considerably in red (even though we did a focus
between OBs), we start another focus sequence. 
- Stopped the second OB in the third dithering after the focus degraded considerably .. UT 08:33

UT 08:33
- Moving to weaklens MAX8 .. looks good after two focusing iterations
- Started first OB at 08:41
- Seeing is 0.9 arcsec in the first I-band image
- Images look pretty elongated in blue side 
- Seeing stayed between 0.6-0.9 arcsec in I

UT 10:00
- Moved to ND qso field 146848a .. did three iterations to get good focus 
- Started OB at 10:08 .. lost ~10 min due to red side giving an error, restarted OB three times 
- Re-started OB at 10:40 .. lost a lot of time reinitializing LBC .. and the seeing is 0.7 arcsec

UT 11:25
- Moved to GRB field .. one iteration for getting focus
- Started OB at 11:28 
- Seeing is 0.9 arcsec in red r, the blue side is a little out of focus 

UT 11:51
- Started M101 OB after two focus iterations 
- Seeing is relatively good in R, ~0.9-1.0 arcsec
- We restart the M101 OB, there is not much time before sunrise and figured that 
moving to a new target would just cost us time 

UT 12:39
- Moving to take flatfields
- Started rr flatfield OB at 12:48 .. scaled by 15 to get good counts, look good in the second set
- Run gi flats .. done with flats at 13:10
 
UT 13:25
- Running 3darks OB