Observing Log  27 December, 2011
OSU/RC/LBTO queue
Observers:  Fuyan Bian, Weihao Bian, Richard Green, Ben Shappee, Erin Ryan

Thin Cirrus low in the west, Seeing ~1.0” to start at high elevation to the west.  
Night summary: seeing did not stabilize until the second half of the night, so faint object masks were not 
worthwhile until the middle of the night.  Calibrations were not possible in the afternoon, because 
both enclosure shutter doors had problems and were being worked on, particularly the right door.  The logic 
was in an undetermined state because of misalignments of limits and manual resets.  The root cause is probably 
structural shifting of the whole building with temperature change that exceeds the tolerance of the latch pin limit switches.

Two problems cost two hours+ of time.  One was a rotator failure, attributable to the known but not understood fiber interface 
problem.  When the MCS program was restarted to clear the interface logic, that drop of telemetry information caused the 
secondary shell to rest and the system to stop ungracefully, so Doug Miller needed to get us restarted.  The other was a 
configuration issue.  The software group had initiated a new protocol for accessing astronomer-supported configuration files, 
such as pointing and collimation lookup tables.  Unfortunately, one of the cognizant astronomers had been on leave and had 
not been cognizant of that.  The upshot is that the wrong file had been updated for wavefront sensor control when the SX 
adaptive secondary was restored to service.  The TCS was using the rigid secondary version, which was optimized to correct 
for the big coma induced by the rigid secondary hexapod tilt.  The main aberration from the adaptive secondary is uncompensated 
astigmatism, at the 1000-2000 nm level.  When the TCS tried to cure a particularly bad case after a new pointing, it 
drove in so much coma correction that one hexapod leg hit a limit.  At that point, we stopped observing, called Andrew, and 
sorted out the version confusion. 

Compact Log
18:20  Slewing to BD+28 4211, to do with dual grating and red only.  This object is probably in clear sky.  Acq image shows 
1.4” FWHM.  Note that the red companion is barely separated from the standard star…  With mediocre seeing, we will start with the 
LBTO bright quasar program until things stabilize.

18:48  Slewing to Fe II  J0150+13  Seeing ~1.5”.

19:15  Slewing to J0245+01,  wrong guide probe position.

19:17  Slewing to J0054+00,  seeing ~1.7”.  Guide star too faint for very bad seeing.

19:40  Slewing to J0304+00,  strong astigmatism, seeing ~1.5”.

20:10  Slew to J0142-08,  Large uncorrected coma, “seeing” ~1.6”  No signal – incorrect configuration corrects coma first rather 
than astigmatism.  Drove huge coma into image.  Stopped to re-collimate and could not find configuration file that would correct 
astigmatism first.  

21:05 slew to J0322+00, seeing ~1.5.

21:29  slew to KT Eri a,  seeing ~1.3 (at -10 deg dec)  last exposure truncated slightly early when rotator stopped.

22:05  slew to css nova; aborted with rotator failure; Geno going to swap fibers.  

23:20  Attempt to acquire CSS nova – no object at position of coordinates.  Acquisition image sent to Mark Wagner as co-I to sort 
out how to execute the observation.

23:27  Slew to SN2000e1  Initial seeing ~0.8”.  Aborted after 4 out of 6 20-min exposures as airmass is getting high.

01:12 slew to G191-B2B   seeing 1.0”; dual grating only.

01:31  slew to ‘pius’ supernova; repeating acquisition to get deeper image of slit.  2nd time succeeded in completing the acquisition 
sequence, including offset.  Seeing ~0.9”.

03:46  slew to J1146+03 – guide star/target position error, so moving on.

03:50 slew to SN PTF10heh, finding chart not perfectly adequate – assumed the object closest to the slit (vertex of right triangle) was the SN.  
Seeing ~ 1.2”.  Stayed around 1.1” for the long observing sequence.

As astronomical twilight starts, picking up a couple more bright LBTO quasars.
05:58  Slew to J1119+15, seeing ~0.9”.

06:15 slew to J1107+10, seeing unstable.

06:35 slew to F34, seeing 1.3”, sky getting very bright.  Single exposure, ends at 6:46.

Since manual intervention was required to close the right shutter door, with an indeterminate time required, we decide to put MODS 
to sleep and postpone daily calibrations to the following afternoon.