OSU/RC Queue Observing UTC 2011 Apr 29 (civil date 2011 Apr 28/29) ============================================================================== Observer: David Atlee (OSU), Jennifer Johnson (OSU), Alexandro Bedregal (UMinn) Observing Assistant: Steven Allanson Support Astronomer : Olga Kuhn Instrumentation : Tim Shih =========== Instrument: =========== LBC ========= Summary: ========= The sky was clear throughout the night, and the seeing was moderate for most of it. The seeing began to degrade at approximately 2:45 AM (0945 UT). Our last target after this was PG1522+101 for the ND_whim project. We took the first OB twice to deliver better S/N in poor seeing conditions. We lost approximately 2 hours due to high winds. In addition, the winds were sometimes high enough during the periods when we were open that we were unable to observe some targets, particularly those in the south-west. We also experienced several technical problems with the LBCs during the night. The first was a communication failure between the LBC control computers and the archive computer, which made acquiring evening twilight flats difficult. It also took an unusually long time for the focus sequence to converge (on average 6 iterations for ~12 minutes). This problem was not specific to one or the other camera. Four times during the night, we experienced CCD controller errors with the LBCs which required us to power cycle the cameras to reset them. This required about 10 minutes each, and two of these incidents happened during twilight. This contributed to our poor collection of twilight flats in both the evening and the morning. Another of these incidents occurred after an OB failed to stop after being instructed to do so. Eventually, Olga had to stop the OB from the engineering interface, and this led to the crash. The rotators on both telescopes appeared to stop tracking during one of the OSU_monitor exposures. This leads to stellar streaks with a definite curl in the first exposure of NGC 5194. ============ Opening ============ 0145 Found a problem with the data management. New images do not appear in /newdata on Linux machines. This makes twilight flats, pointing and focus impossible. 0156 Sunset. Lights still on in dome due to day crew working. Skies are clear and wind is moderate. 0209 Lights off in dome. Beginning short bias sequence (10 readouts). 0214 Preparing to open dome. Light has switched back on in dome. 0225 Beginning first sky flat OB. Slewing telescope to target field. 0232 Beginning U_spec & z band sky flats. Expect ~15000 counts. 0236 Most recent U_spec exposure has ~28000 counts, z has ~15000 0241 RPC Client host communication error. Power-cycling LBCs. Unlikely to finish any more twilight flats tonight. 0247 LBCs back from power cycle. Trying flat OB w/ V & V bands. Images have ~2500 counts and should be considered invalid. 0250 LBCB and LBCR images are both appearing in /newdata. Moving on to collimation & focus. 0255 Beginning collimation & focus sequence. 0258 Dedicated image monitor gives estimated seeing 1.2". 0304 Focus sequence gives estimated seeing 2". Pointing image yields ~1.1". ============ OSU_cc ============ 0312 Beginning focus sequence for PG 1209+49. Estimated seeing 2" 0317 Beginning science OB for PG 1209+49. 0319 Realized that this was the wrong OB. Moving to RX J1245+24. OB failed to stop during slew. Enjoy your star trails. 0325 Unable to stop OB execution. 0329 Managed to stop OB execution, but LBCs went down. Re-initializing. 0332 Beginning focus sequence. Estimated seeing 1.2". 0348 Beginning science exposure for RX J1245+24. Seeing from technical images is 0.7" (blue) and 0.7" (red) 0356 Estimate seeing from red channel (i-Sloan) 0.6". LBCB images are significantly elongated and appear to be badly out of focus. 0403 No zernikes going to telescope on SX (blue) side. 0404 Beginning snapshot exposures. Have not adjusted focus. ============ OSU_qso ============ 0406 Unable to observe QSO 0949 due to wind direction (gusts up to ~19 m/s from direction of target). ============ ND_oldsn ============ 0407 Moving telescope to science field for SN 0409 Beginning focus sequence. Estimate seeing 1.1". 0413 Beginning science OB. Technical chips yield 1.0". 0416 Aborting exposure and closing telescope due to high winds (gusts up to 22.5 m/s). ============ OSU_monitor ============ 0622 Wind speed has dropped enough to open. 0628 Moving telescope to bright star for pointing and focus. 0630 Beginning collimation & focus sequence. Blue side is not converging. 0648 Beginning co-pointing test. Estimate seeing 0.9" from co-pointing test images. 0652 Slewing telescope to focus field for NGC 4395. 0654 Beginning collimation & focus sequence. 0705 Beginning science OB for NGC 4395. Estimate 1" seeing from V-band tech chip. 0710 First science images give seeing 0.8" in R-band. ============ OSU_cc ============ 0718 Moving telescope to science field. 0729 Beginning science exposure. Technical images give estimated seeing of 1.0" 0736 Red science image gives 1.1" seeing. Airmass 1.3. 0738 LBCB issued CCD controller error. First blue image did not appear on disk. 0739 Power cycling LBCs. 0745 Re-starting the OB. First blue science image gives 1.0" seeing. Image appears to be very slightly out of focus. 0800 Beginning snapshot image sequence. ============= OSU_monitor ============= 0803 Moving telescope to focus field for NGC 5194. 0805 Beginning collimation/focus sequence. Estimated seeing 0.8". 0814 Moving telescope to science field to take first exposure. 0820 First science image yields streaks instead of stars. Moving back to focus field. It appears that both rotators stopped tracking. 0821 Moving telescope back to focus field to re-focus. Rotators appear okay in T/O control screen. 0830 Returning to science field. Focus sequence gives estimated seeing of 0.8". 0835 Images show some slight rotator offset between LBCB and LBCR. This rotation appears to be a systematic feature of all the dither positions. 0842 Seeing is 0.7" in R-band. 0900 Seeing is now 0.8" in R-band. 0907 Moving telescope to focus field for NGC 5474. 0908 Beginning collimation & focus sequence. Estimated seeing 0.8". 0930 Moving telescope to science field for NGC 5474. 0938 First R-band science image gives seeing 1.1" @ airmass 1.3s. 0948 Seeing has grown to 1.3" in U_spec. 1005 Moving telescope to focus field for NGC 4258. 1006 Beginning collimation & focus sequence. Estimated seeing 1.5". 1012 Moving telescope to science field. Technical chip gives consistent seeing estimate of 1.6". Aborting ============ ND_whim ============ 1020 Moving telescope to science field for PG 1522+101 1021 Beginning collimation & focus sequence. 1037 Beginning science OB for first exposure (a). Estimate seeing is 1.3" from technical chip. Airmass 1.3. 1042 First science image gives seeing ~1.2" in R-band. 1044 Technical chip yields 1.6" seeing in U-band. Given poor seeing conditions, we will repeat this OB once it finishes. 1100 Starting a second integration of first OB (a) to improve S/N in poor seeing conditions. Airmass 1.4. 1113 Lost guiding on blue side. U_spec image is being taken at this time, and it will likely have poor PSF conditions. 1121 Last U_spec image has 1.5" seeing. ============== Calibrations ============== 1124 Starting first sky flat test exposure in V & V bands. Approximately 700 counts in 15 seconds. 1132 Moving telescope to point away from wind. Get approximately 700 counts in 5 seconds after move. Moderately dense star field. 1144 CCD controller error in LBCB: errorcode 9. Power cycling LBCs. 1150 Re-starting sky flat OB with V & V bands. Getting ~3500 counts. 1155 Re-running V & V band sky flat OB with 33% increase in exposure times. Now getting ~20000 counts. 1200 Beginning test exposure for g & i bands. Get saturation. 1203 Dividing exposure times by 4. Getting about 30000 counts. 1207 Starting test exposure for r & r bands. Saturating in 2 seconds. 1208 Trying again w/ 1s exposures (shortest reasonable). Getting 60000 counts in test image. Not taking these flats.