OSU/RC Queue Observing UTC 2011 November 17 (civil date 2011 Nov 16/17) =========================================== Observers: K.Z. Stanek, R. Stoll (OSU) Observing Assistant: Steve Allanson Support Astronomer : Dave Thompson Instrumentation : Tim Shih Instrument: LBC/MODS Summary: Clear all night. Terrible seeing for the first half (~3"), calmed down toward the end. Running commentary: 00:51 Started SkyFlat_gi_r2210d27_pa0_5.ob, created with mkskyflat1.pl for PA=0. (have been running test flat ob, and now i is not saturated). Counts are high for i, low for g. 00:56 Rerunning ob, scaled by 3.00. Counts are high for i, low for g 01:00 Test exposures for r,z scaled by 30 was too little. Or possibly I set the scaling before downloading and it auto-reset to one. Regardless, am punting on r,z until dawn. 01:04 Doing PA=180 g,i flats, scaled by 15. Counts 12000 on g, 54000 on i We have great i flats, but not great g flats. We'll try again in the morning. 01:10 Scaling by 30 while we figure out what to observe first. Stopping the ob, going to a pointing star. 01:18 Going to WT10-304, running dofpia,/x2,/first 01:21 Hit a limit, Steve is manually adding focus. Capital S in IDL for a graceful exit. 01:23 dofpia again. 01:43 giving up on this field; blue keeps failing. Under Dave's direction, moving a few hours to ACT0274, which we hope is out of the galactic plane. 01:45 added 3000 nm of Z7 01:50 We are no longer spinning our wheels; we have accurate fits in blue; collimation underway. Try hard to not start collimating on a crowded field; it's a big waste of time. 01:56 converged. 02:02 at NGC 6946 focus position. Collimating. 02:06 converged. Running the focus ob again to take image for lbcrangebal. Don't just hit play! That will rerun the dofpia ob. Reload the focus OB. 02:12 running it for real now. lbcrangebal is failing with an error unfamiliar to Dave. He is looking into it and we are proceeding without copointing. 02:17 Starting science OB without copointing. Kris has revised the OSU_monitor OBs to divide the Uspec time between the other two filters (that filter has degraded, with unknown effects on transmission) Seeing is terrible (~3"). We don't have LBC programs for bad seeing (>1.5") at all, and the programs for 1.5" are not up right now, so staying on this target. Before we rerun it, we will retry the copointing. 02:54 beginning dofpia for collimation update. 02:58 Collimation converged quickly. Running focus OB for lbcrangebal. lbcrangebal is working fine now. 03:02 Rerunning OSU_monitor_N6946. 03:37 slewing to NGC925 focus field 03:39 collimating and copointing. 03:47 Starting OSU_monitor_N925.ob The seeing appears to be improving slightly (still > 2), so we will recollimate and do this field again before moving on. 04:13 beginning collimation on focus field 04:19 converged, beginning N925 ob again. 04:46 beginning to collimate on ND_whim pks0232phot field. 04:51 beginning science OB. We'll do it twice because of the terrible seeing. No recollimation; this OB is quite short. 04:59 Restarting OB. 05:07 Slewing to SA95 position (ND_whim) to begin collimating. 05:12 Beginning science OB. Collimating took two iterations. Did not copoint. 05:19 Redoing science OB. Seeing around 2". 05:26 Slewing to position of OSU_monitor N628focus. 05:34 Finally converged. Running focus ob to get an in-focus image for copoint 05:37 DO NOT ACCIDENTALLY RUN lbcrangebal on collimating images. Bad behavior. hit limit. Steve cleared offsets, I need to recollimate. 05:39 recollimating. 05:43 converged in two iterations. Running focus ob. 05:45 lbcrangebal. 05:46 starting science OB. 06:07 noticed LBCB was not running. Following Dave's advice, we stop the OB, turn off the systems, and restart them. This power cycle will take a few minutes. 06:14 Power cycle done, going back to collimation position. 06:19 failed to reconnect to LBT after power cycle. Going to collimation pos. Four iterations to converge. 06:27 Restarting science OB. 06:36 (OB in progress) We finally have sub-arcsecond seeing! ~0.7" 07:13 KZS took over, log will now suck; Moved to the M31 field, collimation took 3 interations. 07:16 Started the M31 science exposure, seeing is about 1.1" The red side did not have a filter name in for the sequences 2 and 3, so no red data were taken in these sequences. 07:48 Moved to the SN field, collimating; the collimation script crushed once; Seeing is about 1". Took sceince data. 08:32 Collimating in the same field. Seeing a bit better than 1". Taking BR sequence. 09:08 Switching to MODS. 09:24 acqMODS sdss0758p2204.acq canceled by Steve. First we'll point. 09:29 Sending preset again. Got this: ** ERROR: Command 'INSTCONFIG red imaging' timed out after 120 seconds Trying again. Simply re-executing the script failed, with error "ACQ ERROR: INSTCONFIG instrument configuration already in progress - command disallowed" By manually selecting a different ROI on the GUI, (which was highlighted in green suggesting that was where it had gotten stuck), we got it unstuck and proceeded. 09:44 taking a confirmation through-slit image. 09:46 execMODS sdss0758p2204.obs The spectra look good. A quick-and-dirty extraction shows the major features shown in the SDSS spectrum. 10:43 acqMODS sdss0906p4818.acq The acquisition went completely smoothly this time. 10:52 taking confirmation image 10:54 execMODS sdss0906p4818.obs spectra look good 11:46 acqMODS g191b2b.acq 11:53 confirmation through-slit image 11:54 execMODS g191b2b.obs 12:06 acqMODS ASSASSIN0-UT12.acq 12:13 confirmation through-slit image 12:14 execMODS ASSASSIN0.obs 12:36 acqMODS SN2010jl-UT12.acq 12:44 confirmatory image 12:46 execMODS SN2010jl (we are past astronomical twilight and the sky is brightening apace.) note: the unique-name bug cropped up again for the through-slit image, saved as '111104M8.01t.fits' instead of 'mods1r.20111117.0032.fits' as expected. (The latter is the first spectrum instead.) PROBLEM: We are exposing but not writing the blue images to /newdata. Currently mods1b.20111117.0013.fits is the last b image written, but we are taking mods1b.20111117.0019.fits. We closed, as it is twilight. Solution: After consulting with Rick, the solution is modsCmd blue fitsflush. 13:41 Executing Nov17.multcal, which includes: bias8K.cal bias3k.cal prbias.cal grpixflats.cal grflats.cal imflats.cal grlamps.cal /home/MODSeng/modsScripts/Support/modsSleep.pro