LBT OSU/RC Queue Observing: UTC 2008 March 13

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


Summary: 

Tonight started out with poor seeing, cirrus, and rising winds, then settled
into ~1.5" seeing most of the night.  It was warmer than previous days, so 
it took longer for the mirrors to equilibrate.  Overall the night was 
non-photometric with bands of thin cirrus and with gusty winds. 
LBC crashed two times at the beginning when we were going to take biases and 
when starting the flats. In both crashes Marco rebooted the CMU computer, 
the instrument worked fine after the second reboot.  The crashes cost
us evening biases and sky flats, but we got ending calibrations.


Programs observed: 

  UMN_17PHolmes - ran twice, seeing variable 
  NDgrb1 - GRB080310
  UVA_LeoI, BR3 and BR4 OBs
  OSUmonitor dailies M81, M82, M101, NGC4258
  OSUmonitor NGC4214, NGC4605, NGC5474, IC2574


Details:

UT 01:31 
- We start trying to take biases, but the red camera crashes .. Marco has to reboot the CMU
- After we turn it on again, the camera crashes again (this time is a shutter error?) and we have to reboot the CMU for 
the second time in ~10 min 

UT 01:45
- Started Us and z flats but we get another camera crash (blue trackers) when stopping the OB 
to rescale the exptime

UT 02:05
- Doing gi flats .. scaled by 15

UT 02:11
- Doing first focus in flatfield position .. did ~5 focus iterations, the seeing is bad

UT 02:33
- Moving to Comet Holmes .. did ~5 iterations before converging in blue, red ealier 
- Started exposure at 02:50 .. scaled by 50 the first in second  exposure because too few counts in the comet
- Seeing is very bad, ~2.5 arcsec
- When doing focus after finishing the first OB the images in the archive (red side) are stuck 

UT 03:37
- Started second OB 
- Seeing still really bad, ~2.5-2.9 arcsec 

UT 04:14
- We moved to M81 to see if the seeing is better 
- The seeing is still bad ~2-2.5 arcsec 
- We finish the OB and do a focus to get another OB 
- Seeing getting better through the second OB, ~1.5 arcsec in R at 04:51

UT 04:53 
- Moved to M82 to do focus .. two iterations were good enough
- Seeing is 1.5 arcsec in R

UT 05:08
- Moving to UVA program LeoI .. two focus iterations were good
- Started cent OB BR3 at 05:18 .. east BR3 and west BR3 follows
- Seeing is 1.8 arcsec in R
- In third OB (BR3 west) seeing looks like its getting better, ~1.4 arcsec

UT 06:42 
- Red filter error when executing focus .. two iterations were needed in focus, camera 
didn't crash at leat 
- The seeing is getting slightly better, ~1.3 arcsec in the last images of OB BR4 east
- Starting OB BR4 qwar R 07:05

UT 07:26
- We are doing again BR3 cent because it was done under very poor seeing
the first time 
- Seeing gets worse, ~1.8 arcsec in R

UT 07:48
- Moving to NGC4214 .. two iterations and focus looks good 
- Starting OB at 08:02 
- Seeing around 1.4 arcsec in R 

UT 08:11
- Moving to NGC4605 .. two iterations for focus, some coma in blue and red 
- Started OB at 08:20 
- Seeing is bad again, ~1.7 arcsec in R
- Restarted the OB to make up for bad seeing 
- Seeing is getting better again, around 1.3 arcsec 

UT 08:55
- Moving to IC2574 and doing focus
- Started OB at 09:09 
- Seeing is around 6.0pix=1.4 arcsec in R, worse in blue side

UT 09:23
- Moving to GRB .. after focusing started OB with full exposure time at 09:32
- Focus images show "banding" in r-sloan 
- Seeing is 1.7 arcsec in r-sloan 

UT 10:22
- Moving to M101 focus field .. two iterations were good 
- Started OB at 10:34
- First image looks good in R (seeing 1.5 arcsec), but the stars in B image look rotated around the center
- Second B-image looks good now 

UT 11:07
- Moved to NGC5474 .. focus looks good after two iterations 
- Seeing is better in R, ~1.1-1.2 arcsec 
- Strangely, the B image doesn't arrive in the archive and its reading blue and red tech chips images 

UT 11:49
- Moving to NGC4258 .. focus is good after one iteration of lbcfpia 
- Started OB at 11:53
- Seeing between 1.4-1.7 arcsec 
- Last images with high background 

UT 12:56 
- Taking rr flats and Usz flats

UT 13:16 
- Closing telescope 

UT 13:29
- Started 25bias OB .. darks go after

--- Jose