BT OSU/RC Queue Observing: UTC 2008 March 12

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


Summary: 

It was a smooth night with sub-arcsec seeing (0.7-0.8" with episodes
as good as 0.6" at SDSS-i) most of the night.  We had some problems with LBC 
at the beginning of the night and Marco had to reboot the CMU two times. 
Luckily, the second time was when we were taken flat fields and we didn't 
have any more problems with the instrument during the night.  Weather
was non-photometric with bands of cirrus going overhead all night.  Only
non-photometric targets were observed.


Programs observed:

  ND snsearch, completed two Uz OBs
  ND GRB1 (GRB030510)
  OSU monitor dailies, M81, M82, NGC4258
  OSU monitor NGC3489
  OSU/AZ Kuiper, completed UT12 
  OSU weaklens completed A1835 and MAX5
  We attempted UM_17PHolmes, but had no ephemerides for UTC Mar 12 and 
   could not point at the comet.


Details:

UT 00:35
- Started 25bias
- We got an error and red side stopped taking biases at image 17 

UT 01:40 
- Started flatfields, starting BI flats and got an RCP failure again, rebooted the CMU, second time 
in the day 

UT 02:17 
- Taking focus images, both mirrors way out of focus 
- Seeing looks good in the monitor ~1 arcsec

UT 02:44
- Moved to Come Holmes OB, getting focus frames 
- Focus took ~7 iterations 

UT 03:00
- Started OB 
- Comet is not on the field .. Rick tried changing the position but we didn't find it 

UT 03:21
- Moving to Kuiper belt program March 12 UT .. focus needed two iterations
- Started OB at 03:33 
- Focus doesn't look very good, seeing is around 6pix=1.4 arcsec
- Focus degraded pretty fast in red side, but stayed good in blue 
- We stop the OB and go to do a new focus 

UT 04:10
- Restarted the OB again after doing focus 
- Now seeing looks better 5.0pix
- Seeing looks pretty good, around 0.8 arcsec during all the execution of the program

UT 05:25
- Moving to NGC3489 taking focus frames .. after two images we get good focus
- Started at 05:35 
- Seeing still looks very good, 0.7-0.9 arcsec in red side, blue side went out of focus relatively fast

UT 06:15 
- Moved to ND Cosmos snsearch field and doing focus .. one iteration 
- Started OB at 06:19
- Seeing is really good, 0.6" in z-sloan and 0.9" in U

UT 06:55
- Doing focus before starting another integration of snsearch 
- Started second OB of snsearch field .. 06:59 .. seeing is 0.6 arcsec in z-band 

UT 07:39 
- Moved to weaklensing OB A1835 .. did two focus iterations 
- Seeing is good, ~3.3pix=0.75 in i-sloan, but the g-band image looks out of focus (or guiding?)
- The background seems high in i-sloan, ~20k counts 
- Seeing holding up around 0.8 arsec during the first OB, degrading a bit 
- Started second OB at 08:13 .. images in blue side look bad, probably guiding problems
- Seeing still good in the last OB, ~0.7 arcsec in i-sloan and 0.9 arcsec in g-sloan

UT 09:05 
- Moving to M82 field .. only one iteration needed for focus .. we may be looking through clouds at this position
- Started taking data at 09:14 .. seeing looks good ~0.9 arcsec

UT 09:24
- Moving to M81 field without doing focus, still looks good in M82 .. first image and it looks out of focus,
we go to the focus field 
- Restarted the OB at 09:36 
- Seeing is good, 0.9 arcsec in R, however red V looks out of focus .. we try changing the global offset
by -0.05 to see if it works 

UT 09:56 
- Moved to cluster MAX5, doing focus 
- Seeing staying pretty good, ~0.7-0.8 arcsec

UT 11:20 
- Moved to GRB field and did focus, two iterations 
- Started OB at 07:32
- Seeing is 0.8 arcsec in r-sloan

UT 11:50
- Moving to NGC4258 .. focus takes one iteration 
- We start the science OB at 11:58
- Seeing is 0.9 arcsec in R, 

UT 12:46
- Taking gi flats .. scaled by 10 to get good counts

UT 13:05
- Starting UsZ flat test .. scaled by 2 to get good counts

UT 13:14
- Closing the telescope and taking 3darks OB

--- Jose