OSU/RC Queue Observing UTC 2011 Sept 29 (civil date 2011 Sept 28/29) ======================================= Observers: R. Pogge & R. Stoll (OSU) Observing Assistant: Geno Bechetti Support Astronomer : Olga Kuhn Instrumentation : Tim Shih Instrument: MODS Summary: Started clear at sunset Telescope closed during first few hours of night due to clouds. Details: 01:47 -- Open and pointing star 01:56 -- Active preset to a Persson star to collimate - *very* out of focus and astigmatic, took 10min to begin to converge. 02:07 -- High cloud came out of NE very rapidly, lost guide star before convergence 02:08 -- Preset to science target for ND_J1717 to see if better... it is not. Lost guide the guide star within minutes. The high cloud from the NE is quickly overspreading the sky above us. No precipitation danger, so tracking open loop and waiting. 02:40 -- Precautionary close - clouds above showing no breaks except way off in the west. Because humidity is low, Geno is leaving the vent doors open for now, but we'll be keeping a close eye on the clouds. 04:12 -- Clouds are dissipating. We have reopened, and are going to a pointing star. 04:28 -- Collimated on a Persson standard star. Now slewing to OSU_FeIIAGN_mkn957 for acquisition. 04:39 -- Started mkn957 obs script 05:05 -- Acquiring on feige110. 0.7" seeing. 05:12 -- Begin feige110.obs 05:20 -- slewing to phl1092. Acquired, about to do slit offset, then clouds came in and offset failed. 05:35 -- clouds fading out again, redoing acquisition script. 05:41 -- begin phl1092.obs 0.7" seeing, beautiful. Clouds occasionally still in and out. Guiding has been consistent, however, so we are continuing. Guiding lost for several seconds at 05:55, but regained. Lost again at 05:58. Regained at 05:59. Lost for several secends at 06:01. Regained at 06:01. Lost again at 06:14. Regained at 06:14. Lost again at 06:15. Drifting in and out. Lost again at 06:17. Not sure it's coming back this time. Read the chip out at 06:19, at around 800 seconds. See actual exposure time in the header, 720 s on blue, 727 s on red. Giving up at this location, going to chase a sucker-hole elsewhere. 06:23 -- UM_RMHstars_M33C-4119.acq 06:31 -- begin obs script. Seeing is 0.6" in r. Guider counts are holding steady. Looks like the clouds aren't much of a problem over here at the moment. 06:52 -- OSU_LSNeIm_SN1995av.img. WFS far out, but converging quickly. 06:55 -- WFE is 428. We're beginning the exposure. Clouds coming in and out. Aargh. Seeing around 1". Maybe 0.8. Possibly artifically larger because of guiding blur due to clouds. ~07:10 -- Went to OSU_LSNeIm_SN2005gj, but it's completely cloudy over there. Went back to 1995av. Too cloudy. 07:18 -- collimating on an on-axis Persson standard star. 07:40 -- we're on SN1995av, rewrote the script to shift the field center a bit to get an 11th magnitude guide star. Clouds still going in and out. 0.9" seeing. 08:08 -- still sitting on this field for lack of better things to do. 1" 08:17 -- running it again. The clouds are getting better, we'll move on after this. 08:24 -- aargh. We were sitting here waiting for the wave front sensor to converge for the last five minutes. 08:41 -- OSU_FeIIAGN_mkn1044.acq 08:50 -- OSU_FeIIAGN_mkn1044.obs Still some cloud. 09:14 -- OSU_FeIIAGN_iras03450.obs. Seeing is ~1.2" mods1b.20110929.0026.fits shows faint artifact mid-chip from saturated star in the previous field. Also note that the 40k counts in Halpha means that if we were not looking through clouds, might have saturated. 09:50 -- OSU_FeIIAGN_iras04416.acq Guide star not picked up through clouds. 09:53 -- OSU_LSNeSpec_SN2000ei.acq Seeing 1.25" 10:04 -- OSU_LSNeSpec_SN2000ei.obs Nothing visible in first exposure. Seeing and transparency not good enough for this target. Stopped second exposure at 300s, going back to OSU_FeIIAGN_iras04416, hoping for better conditions so we keep the guide star this time. 10:33 -- OSU_FeIIAGN_iras04416.acq again. This guide star is 17th magnitude; no wonder we are having trouble. 10:40 -- Hacked the acquisition script to rotate 180 degrees to get a 14th magnitude guide star. ouble. They are separated on the guider, and the double is outside the WFS hotspot. This is succeeding in guiding, unlike before, so we'll stay here. 10:48 -- OSU_FeIIAGN_iras04416.obs 11:15 -- OSU_FeIIAGN_g191b2b.acq 11:21 -- begin g191b2b.obs 11:30 -- OSU_FeIIAGN_iras07598.acq Twilight's about to begin, but we'll give it a shot anyway. Wavefront errors not converging. Off-axis guide star, but this is especially bad. There's a brighter and less off-axis guide star that would have been a better choice; it's in the yellow 'exclusion' region, but would not have occulted a centered target. 11:44 -- OSU_FeIIAGN_iras07598.obs begin. Zodiacal light beginning to show. 12:20 -- closing up. 12:33 -- Begin taking calibrations.