LBT OSU/RC Queue Observing: UTC 2008 May 4 Observers: Don Terndrup, Jose Prieto TO: David Gonzalez Assisted by: Ray and John (on site) Sunset: 19:12 Eve. twilight ends: 20:39 Mor. twilight begin: 4:07 Sunrise: 5:34 > Summary: was non-photometric, observing through cirrus all night, sometimes rather thick (e.g., at NGC 4258). The night went much smoothly than last night. Collimating at the beginning of the night took ~30 min (several Z7 and Z8 corrections in blue; red side converged after 3 iterations) with the help of John Hill. During the night we needed from 1 to 3 iterations to converge in focus. The seeing was between ~0.7 arcsec (i-Sloan and R-bessel in red) and ~1.3 arcsec. We had the error with the red filter 7 times, although the time lost due to this problem was minimal (~10-15 min). I noticed that if the OB is stopped before it gives the error (see that blue is exposing and red filter is still moving), then after re-starting the OB it worked fine .. so the error was not issued all the 7 times, but 4 times (the other three I noticed early, stopped and re-sent OB). We didn't have any problems with the red rotator. In the afternoon when we turned on the camera, it started to drift counter-clockwise as we have seen the previous days, but we issued an OB to a given position angle and the red rotator stopped drifting and went to the > Programs executed:  * OSUmonitor: N3077, N3344, M82, M81, N3627, M101, N4258, N6946, N6503  * OSUrotation: NGC6891 two times  * OSUweaklens: MAX3 (background too high because of clouds) > There are lots of cirrus around at sunset, clouds coming in from south west. Skyflats may not be very useful (CHECK). UT 01:00 - Ray is filling the dewars of blue and red. UT 01:19 - Started 2 dark OB UT 01:52 - Started 25 bias OB .. stopped after 15 biases to let David open the dome UT 02:02 - Opening the telescope UT 02:12 - Moved to flat field position and starting exposures .. still sky is too bright UT 02:29 - Changed to UsY to get some more flats in Us .. look good ~20k-40k - Getting rR, two sets UT 02:57 - Moved to first target OSUmonitor NGC 3077 .. taking focus images UT 03:24 - After a few iterations with lbcfpia we converged .. it needed quite a few corrections in Z8 and Z7 in the blue side, red side converged much earlier - Started science OB of NGC 3077 at 03:28 after a red filter error, same as last night - Seeing is ~1.2 in blue and 1.4 in red side UT 03:36 - Moving OSUmonitor NGC 3344 - Started focus OB at 03:42 .. did a focus correction of -3500 units UT 03:53 - Started science OB after 3 iterations - Seeing looks pretty good in red ~0.8 arcsec, ~0.9 arcsec in blue UT 04:15 - Stars in red image look doubled, as if it jumped when guiding .. it doesn't look like a rotator problem because see the same everywhere in the field .. blue also looks moved - Images with this problem are: lbcr.20080504.041554, lbcb...041615 UT 04:27 - Moving to OSUmonitor M82 focus field .. needed 2 iterations, a bit of coma and defocus in blue, defocus in red UT 04:36 - Started science OB in M82 - Focus degrades a bit after 3 exposures .. will have to refocus in M81 UT 04:48 - Moved to OSUmonitor M81 focus field .. just 1 focus was good UT 04:51 - Started OSUmonitor M81 science OB - First red side image looks elongated taken with V-bessel .. maybe the zeropoint is not right ? - Seeing in R is 0.9 arcsec and ~1.1 in blue UT 05:15 - Moved to OSUmonitor NGC3627 .. focus took 2 iterations - Seeing is 0.9 arcsec in R and ~1.2 arcsec in blue UT 05:31 - Error on red filter wheel 2: "timeout error on stop" .. left last U-band observation finish UT 05:49 - Used a few minutes to create a new OB that has 4x300 in R-bessel and 4x300 in V-bessel (blue side) - Good seeing is 0.8 arcsec in R and 1.1 arcec in V, although the guiding looks bad in blue with elongated stars UT 06:14 - Moved to OSUmonitor M101 .. took 1 focus image - Seeing is pretty good, ~0.8 arcsec in red and ~0.9-1.0 in blue - Co-pointing between blue and red doesn't seem very good .. UT 06:55 - Moved to OSUweaklens MAX3 .. focusing took 2 iterations, only 2 pupils - Seeing is holding good, 0.7-0.8 arcsec in i-Sloan, but wind is peaking up - The background in i-Sloan is very high, ~25k-27k counts; r-Sloan in red is better ~10k counts UT 07:56 - Starting 3rd and final OB of MAX3 - Seeing has stayed pretty constant at 0.7-0.8 arcsec .. background high in i-Sloan ~28kcounts - Strangely, there seems to be dust in the i-Sloan filter that is producing an image of the pupil that moved between OBs. UT 08:22 - Moved to OSUrotation NGC6891 .. had to move the enclosure around because it was getting to the azimuth limit of 460 deg .. focusing took 1 iteration - We got the red filter error and had to resend the OB, it worked the second time - Seeing got worse ~1.1 arcsec in R and V  UT 08:51 - Moved to OSUmonitor NGC 4258 to the focus field .. we will start at 1.5 airmass .. only 1 focus frame was required, still seems well collimated - Seeing around 1 arcsec - Lots of clouds, transparency is bad and background is pretty high .. also loosing polaris seeing monitor UT 09:33 - Moving to OSUmonitor NGC6946 .. focused 2 times - Started science OB at 09:44 - Red filter was moving to R-bessel and taking a long time (was going to time out and give the error) .. stopped the OB before it gave the error and resend it .. went to the filter and started integration - Seeing is around 1.2 arcsec now .. background is high in R-band filter, ~18k counts UT 10:22 - Moving to OSUmonitor NGC 6503 focus field .. 1 iteration was good - Seeing is ~1 arcsec in R and B UT 10:45 - Moving to OSUmonitor NGC6891 - Finally started the OB after a few minutes trying to get focus field offset, too many stars .. should have offset OB to get collimation UT 11:15 - Moving to flat field position .. still dark - Got gi flats - When trying BI test flat we get the filter error in red (moving to red, timed out .. hardware failure) - Getting rr flats .. filter error again when moving to r .. always in filter wheel 1 UT 12:10 - Closing the telescope UT 12:14 - Doing 25 bias OB -- jose