LBT OSU/RC Queue Observing: UTC 2008 May 5

Observers: Don Terndrup, Jose Prieto
TO: David Gonzalez 
Assisted by: Ray and John Hill (on site)

Sunset: 19:13
Eve. twilight ends: 20:40
Mor. twilight begin: 4:06
Sunrise: 5:33


Summary: the night was photometric, with variable seeing. The first three hours
of the night were bumpy, especially trying to observe standards, because we
got 7 times the error with the filter wheels. Surprisingly, tonight was not only filter
wheel #1 of red, but also filter wheel #1 of blue (1 time) and filter wheel
#2 of red (1 time). Focusing at the beginning took ~40 minutes. Initially was bad
idea to focus right away in the comet that was at airmass 1.7 and elevation 35deg,
so we had to move to a standard field, focus there, and then go back to the 
low-elevation field. The slowest to converge was blue, as it appears typical. 
The seeing was ~1.0-1.2 arcsec until about 6UT when it started to get worse
very quickly. The seeing went up to 2.4 arcsec (!) around 8UT and then declined
steadily to get subarcsec in the last couple of hours of observing. 


Programs executed: 
* UMcomets: boattini, 21P
* OSUmonitor: N2403, N2903, I2574, N4826, M101
* OSUrotation: N6819 two times
* UM_HJASS: only obtained one OB, the seeing was getting bad at that time (~1.6 arcsec)
* NDqso: J170058 (by mistake did this target, which was lower priority than another
         one at similar time .. sorry)

Weather looks very good, we call it photometric. 

UT 01:30
- Started 25 bias OB

UT 02:10
- David is opening the enclosure 

UT 02:41
- Starting rR flat test .. taking 5 flats
- Moved to gi flats .. got filter error when moving to i-Sloan in red, restarted OB and it worked

UT 02:59
- Moving to UMcomet program boattini .. focusing
- Wasn't a good idea to focus here as the coma is very severe and hard to get better .. we go to standard star field 

UT 03:22
- Moved to standard field SA101 to see if we can focus easier 

UT 03:39
- Converged in focusing .. several iterations in Z7 and Z8 in blue and red, blue also had astigmatism 
.. red converged earlier 
- Moved back to the comet .. focusing was less painful now

UT 03:49
- Started science OB .. the comet is clear in chip2 .. images are clearly out of focus though .. 
nucleus is not saturated 
- We take 1 OB and go back to focus to see if we can get better focus and run the OB again 
- We focus and run the OB again scaling by 0.8 to not saturate the core
- Still the focus doesn't look good .. we think its because we are at 1.8 airmass, elevation ~35 deg
- We obtained a 2nd OB 

UT 04:09
- Moving to standard stars field SA 104 .. doing focus. Needed one iteration, was very astigmatic in blue
- We see stripes with lower counts (~40) in the red camera images
- Got a filter error in red, filter wheel #1, same problem we have seen in previous days
- Again we got the same error when moving to the third filter in the sequence I-bessel, the same as 
before and as we saw two nights ago when doing the standard fields 
- We restart the camera 
- Failed the 3rd consecutive time in the same filter, moving to I-bessel. We give up this standard
and move to SA107

UT 04:38
- Moved to SA 107, airmass is 1.9 .. when taking the focus image again we get the error in red when 
moving to r-Sloan. We restart the OB and goes to the filter without failure 
- We again get a filter error when going to the second dithering .. this time we changed the OB to 
not go to I-band, but we got the filter error in r-Sloan .. now the error message says "motion return error"
- We get another error, this time in blue filter wheel #1 (first time in blue!) 

UT 04:58
- We moved to OSUmonitor NGC 2403 .. getting focus field .. airmass is 1.65 
- We get again a blue filter wheel #1 error .. the message in log is: "stop return error" 

UT 05:06
- Started science OB .. finally no filter errors and we can get images ! 
- At 1.7 airmass the seeing looks quite good 1.0 arcsec in R and focusing is good too

UT 05:17
- Moving to OSUmonitor NGC 2903 .. needed one iteration in focus and good to go
- Seeing is around 1.0-1.2 arcsec in blue and red side 

UT 06:08
- Moving to UMcomet 21P .. 2 focus iterations were good
- First image in R "061551", comet might be at x=1039, 2816 (?) comparing
with dss red image 

UT 06:41
- Moving to UM_HJASS field .. started science OB after two focus iterations 
- Seeing got really bad in the last couple of minutes, ~1.5 arcsec in R
- Stopped after first OB, seeing is too bad for this program 

UT 07:18
- Moving to I2574monitor .. focus took 1 iteration .. very saturated star in the focus field, change
- Seeing is bad, ~1.6 arcsec 

UT 07:37
- Moving to OSUmonitor NGC4826
- Still seeing ~1.6 arcsec 

UT 08:29
- Moved to OSUrotation NGC6819
- Seeing in R is 2.4 arcsec

UT 08:37
- Moving to SA107 
- In the third dithering, filter 3/4, filter is moving for a while and it doesn't give a 
red filter wheel .. filter just says moving and doesn't send an error

UT 09:11
- Moving to OSUmonitor M101 .. focused one time and looks good
- Seeing is getting better, is ~1.0 arcsec

UT 09:51
- Moving to NDqso_J171901dla1
- Seeing is ~0.9 arcsec in red (r and i)

UT 10:41
- Starting second OB of the NDqso program .. ups, I did in fact J170058dla1,
which has lower priority.

UT 11:21
- In twilight, started second OB of OSUrotation program

UT 11:35
- Moved to sky flats position 
- Got rr and VV flats, and 25 bias

-- jose