OSU/RC Queue Observing UTC 2012 June 14
(civil date 2012 June 13/14)
=======================================

Observers: R. Pogge (OSU), D. Berg (UM)
Telescope Operator: S. Allanson
Support Astronomer: O. Kuhn
Support Tech: D. Officer

Instrument: MODS + LBC

Summary:

Clear and warm, light breeze. A few puffs of high cloud that are
dissipating as the sun goes down, tonight looks very promising.

Seeing started out 0.6", but went through brief episodes of 1.2 or
larger before settling back down.  0.8" most of the night, 1.0"
towards dawn.


Programs Executed:

 MODS:
   UVa_Streams_Spec: spec12 observation
   UM_M101stars: field 4, problems with alignment stars on field 2 (see notes)
   OSU_CHAOS: NGC6946 Field 1
   Standard Stars: GD140, HZ44, Wolf1346

 LBC:
   OSU_M31_BASE - late at night, various problems, 2 red images lost (see
                  notes)

Details: All times are UTC unless otherwise noted
-------

Startup

00:50 - side vent doors cracked open, same equilibration profile as
        last night.  This is all good.

03:00 - Open, sunset nice, clear very light wind.  Waiting for it to
        get dark enough to start.

03:15 - nice convergence on the WFS, seeing 0.6" or better.


GD140 - Std Star, dual grating only longslit

03:20 - starting preset.

03:24 - taking a thru-slit image, since sky a little bright still to
        confirm modsAlign -r is doing OK (no indication it is not, but
        it kills a little time for it to get darker).  Right where we
        want it!

03:26 - started obs script.  Seeing ~0.7" on the acq images


UVa_Streams_Spec - NGC5381 spec12 - dual grating longslit

03:43 - early acquisition, we have to take care in placing the center
        of the galaxy because of the offset to position 2 to avoid having
        that knot too close to the top of the first slit segment

03:53 - took an extra 60s shot thru the slit to be sure it was on the
        nucleus of the galaxy.  Note: seeing on the field image was
        0.6" FWHM, but given dome seeing average over the spectra will
        be a little larger, more like 0.8" FWHM.  We're not yet equilibrated
        with outside, but within 0.5C.

03:56 - Started the obs script.  3x240s centered on the nucleus.

04:21 - Offset to the blue spot, and starting 3x600s.  Good
        detect of the spot, so the offset succeeded.


HZ44 - Standard Star, dual grating only longslit

04:56 - Acquiring HZ44

05:01 - started obs script. Seeing ~0.7" FWHM


UM_M101stars - f2 then f4 (dual grating MOS)

05:13 - started acq script 

    *** f2 alignment stars are not in the holes - checked with
        modsView, and none of them are on stars in the DSS images.

        f4 looks somewhat better in modsView - aborted f2 acq and
        doing f4 instead...

05:25 - f4 acq started
        
        Only marginally better, only 3 alignment stars look to be useful.

    *** Note, wind up over 10m/s, Steve is closing the vent doors, we
        may get greater dome seeing as a result.

05:40 - by-hand estimating adjustment using stars visible in slits,
        using a deeper 120s exposure for the confirmatory image

05:45 - as good as we get - alignment stars are terrible - only 2 are
        any good (see mods1r.20120614.0028.fits) but we have targets
        in most of the slits (1 was clipped by the slit side), most
        "bright", some faint. See same image.  In the subsequent spectra
        many of the bad alignment stars are HII complexes, they show
        mostly emission lines.

*** Looked at the f2 acquisition images while integrating on f4.
    I can ID all the target stars and get plausible shifts into
    the slits, but all of the alignment stars are bad.

    There is sufficiently little rotation we could do this by hand
    tomorrow (weather permitting)

06:50 - seeing getting a little puffy, wind is up to 13m/s.


OSU_CHAOS - NGC6946 Field 1 (dual grating MOS)

07:13 - Field acquisition, Target is in NE, so gets the wind to our
        back

07:29 - Started observation - 6x1200s, we'll be here a while.  Seeing
        is 0.8-1.0" and variable (wind W at 10m/s gusting to 14m/s)

07:53 - First spectra are down, slit centering is perfect, lots of
        signal.


Wolf 1346 - Std star (dual grating longslit)

09:42 - Field acquisition, slower preset because az had to unwrap

09:50 - Started obs script.

===================================================================

10:04 - Switching to LBC for the rest of the night

10:18 - Ready to go with LBC

10:20 - OSU_M31_BASE focus OB

10:34 - rangebalancing sent a bogus mirror move and hit a limit.  had
        to reset and start over.

        Two Questions: (1) why does the IRAF program not do minimal
        validation to prevent it from sending badly bogus values?  and
        (2) why does the telescope not check the value it is given and
        validate it against the limits before executing it?

10:47 - starting the observation OB.  Olga modified it to make sure
        there are bright enough stars on the tec chips to guide.

10:55 - blue channel images are showing slight elongation, red is
        round.  problem is an endemic issue of the active optics,
        probably some fine tuning parameter that is off.  Sometimes it
        works, sometimes not.  This time, not.  It's LBC.

11:10 - twilight coming up, last few images will have brighter
        background.

11:17 - done.  Closing up, preparing for calibrations.

====================================================================

LBC: BinoBias

MODS: grpixflats, grlamps, 8K and 3K biases
      grflats for OSU_LSNe, taken during the afternoon with
        a version of the stock script modified for the LS5x60x1.2
        longslit mask.

===================================================================
NOTES:

LBC lost last 2 red 90s images of the sequence of 3.  reason unknown

No secondary mirror RIPs tonight!