OSU/RC Queue Observing UTC 2012 June 12 (civil date 2012 June 11/12) ====================================== Observers: R. Pogge Telescope Operator: G. Bechetti Support Astronomer: O. Kuhn Support Tech: T. Shih Instrument: MODS + LBC Summary: Mostly clear during the day with calm winds. Some thin stuff to the SSW, or out in the east, so not photometric at sunset. Guide stars were very steady the first half, so if not photometric at least very thin and uniform. Later, thin high clouds came in starting around 1am, so not photometric overall. Seeing good, 0.6-0.9" at times. Had a number of AO2 shell RIP events, with difficult restarts. See notes for details and follow IssueTrak #4143. Programs Executed: OSU_SN2011fe - got 5 of 6 before a shell RIP. Last spectrum might be OK, as the star image core was fine, just wacky wings from the bad secondary shape. OSU_SN2011dh - in good slot between standards and LBC start OSU_monitor NGC 6946a, M101a, NGC 6503 (the latter because it was late night) Details: All times are UTC unless otherwise noted ------- Startup 01:30 - Test preset w/MODS, then opening vent doors. 02:39 - Sunset is over, some high thin stuff to the ESE. Probably not a photometric night, but transparency should be good for a while. Nothing too nasty on the satellite so far. 03:01 - Pointing setup, then collimation star... 03:17 - Collimated - one Shack spot looks odd. Asked Doug what's up. 03:22 - GD140 Flux Star Using new-style one-stop std star acq (modsAlign -r) 03:24 - start of obs script. seeing 0.7" FWHM from acq snap OSU_SN2011fe 03:44 - Preset started. First acq image starts at 0347. Target on-slit, only vertical shift to put in sweet spot. Seeing ~0.85 on the acq image 03:51 - observations started. First image start @ 03:53 winds are dead calm. Seeing 0.8" but a little variable. 04:39 - after 2 of 6, seeing is 0.7-0.8". Very nice so far. 04:58 - half way, 3/6 acquired. Guide star brightness is rock steady Seeing ~0.8". Everything is running smoothly. 05:40 - noticed that the shell has RIP'd. Still tracking OK, but "seeing" is getting bad as we're no longer correcting collimation. Geno is working. Impacts the last exposure of the 6. HZ44 - Standard Star, post secondary mirror recovery. 06:05 - Acquiring HZ44. secondary not collimated, way out after recovery. First acq images is crap. Will wait and then GO again by hand when it collimates... 06:11 - Next acq by hand, better collimation than the crap before 06:12 - Starting obs for HZ44, 3x120s dual grating. Seeing is worse than before and a little swimmy, not sure why. 1.0" or so. OSU_SN2011dh 06:24 - Start of ACQ. This one is in a sweet spot in the available targets, even though lower priority (nobody else is in a good spot). 06:33 - Start of obs script. Seeing about 0.9" FWHM. Better than when we were on HZ44, and better looking WFS images. Go figure. Running 3x720s, so 36m on source + readout. WFS and guide star image not looking as good as before. WFS image shows "pincushion" distortion, and the guide star is elongated vertically. Called Doug Miller. He claims the default shape (what defines a "flat" secondary) should be the same for all instruments at this point. What we proposed to do was wait until the observation sequence is done (~10min) and then have Doug change the shape by hand to be MODS and watch what happens (this is less drastic than re-authorizing MODS). All done - Doug forced the shape to be MODS, and now the WFS image looks right - no pincushion shape. Apparently the "default" shape that it started with after the RIP recovery is not the same as the MODS shape (or, thinking back a couple of nights, the same shape as LUCI...). They were blaming the pincushion shape the other night with LUCI on primary mirror shape due to out of temp, but I'd never seen it like that before even on some pretty bad nights with poor mirror equilibration. What Doug et al. have been assuming about the shape default for the AOS is, in fact, incorrect. Great. Wolf1346 Standard Star 07:20 - Preset to Wolf1346, after tweak by Doug. Shell RIP during preset slew. Doug watched as Geno reset the shell and... it loaded Default instead of MODS again. Super. Doug force loaded and we have good WFS images and WFS convergence. 07:30 - Offset star into slit and started observation Now guide star is round and collimation is good. Like before the first RIP of the night. LESSON LEARNED: on recovery from a shell RIP, the correct instrument shape file must be explicitly loaded by hand by one of the AO people (no obvious way for the OSA to do this). The "default" shape does not work for MODS (or LUCI). ======================================================================= 07:43 - Moving to Zenith to change to LBC 07:58 - Done. Took 15 minutes. --------- 08:00 - LBC pointing star setup, including azimuth unwrap OSU_monitor: M101a 08:23 - M101a focus field 08:29 - Started M101a - we're far enough away from the meridian we can risk forgoing the range balancing step since the rotator dtheta/dt is minimal. Seeing ~0.9" FWHM on the red camera with round images. Seeing ~1.0+ on blue, with slight elongation of the images. OSU_monitor: NGC 6946a xx:xx - Focus OB for lbcfpia 09:05 - Running range balancing with the focus OB 09:19 - Running target OB. First red images have 0.9" FWHM and round Blue are 1.0" and round. 09:46 - Done. Blue started to become elongated towards end. Red stayed good. OSU_monitor: NGC 6503 (band 3, but only thing up) 09:47 - Running focus OB and fpia 09:56 - Running range balancing with the focus OB 10:00 - Running science OB - seeing ~0.7 arcsec and round in both cameras 10:14 - Done. Twilight in 16 minutes... ======================================================================= 10:15 - Telescope to Zenith (twilight starts at 10:30) MODS Calibrations 10:20 - MODS grpixflats, grlamps, and bias (8K) LBC Calibrations 11:10 - Setup for sky flats