Observers:  Shappee, Terndrup, Humphreys, Davidson
Telescope Operator: Steve Allanson
Support Astronomer: Dave Thompson
Instrument: MODS

Observation log for 05-06 January 2013

Clear until UT 11:30 when cirrus rolled in.  Good seeing most of the night.


Projects Completed:
ND_pks0232
UM_CHAOS
ND_eclipse

Projects Not Completed:
ND_COLLIS

Instrument:
LBC (until failure) and then MODS.

Play by play:

###########  LBC   ############

23:44:  25 biases

Flats:
Obtained
2 position angles:
U-spec V-Bessel
B-Bessel R-Bessel

1 position angle:
V-Bessel I-Bessel

~01:30:
pks0232-copoint.ob

01:40:
The copointing field did not appear to have enough stars to collimate in the beginning of the night.  We are moving to BS9105 (a nearby field) to have more stars.

02:08:
pks0232-copoint.ob

02:13:
Finally coliimated
co-pointing:   pks0232-copoint.ob
02:17:
pks0232q.ob

~02:28:
collimate

02:36:
pks0232r.ob    Seeing B=1.0 R=1.0

02:46:
pks0232s.ob    Seeing B=1.0 R=1.0, some images R=1.1 arcsec

02:55:
pks0232t.ob    Seeing B=1.0 R=0.95

03:05:
pks0232u.ob   Seeing 1.05=1.10 arcsec B and R

03:15:
pks0232v.ob  Seeing 1.1 arcsec

03:25:
ND_oldsn

03:28:
Telescope lost tracking.  No obvious reason.  Resending.

03:30:
ND_oldsn

collimation/focus problems
There are plenty of good stars at the location.  Red side is just not working.  Tried clearing out active optics and forces and then rerunning.  This still did not work.  

04:00:

SNAFU!  We will try a monitor field, if that does not work.  We will move onto MODS.
We tried a monitor field, and it did not work.  We moved onto MODS.

04:01:
OSU_monitor925
15 good pupils, still not working.  Dave has no more suggestions.  Moving to MODS..frustrating.

###########  MODS   ############

04:25:
Steve is pointing telescope.

~04:30.  Have set up on standard star g191b2b.

04:34:
acqMODS g191b2b.acq

04:37:
execMODS -b DualGrating g191b2b.obs

04:51:
acqMODS eclipse_PA-120.acq

04:59:
Got on target a couple min early
execMODS eclipse.obs
will do more observations

05:39 :
Shell ripped. Secondary encountered a problem.  Exposures 20 and 21 will be affected.  Basically artificially bad seeing.  

05:45:
blue and dual grating standard gd71.

06:24
acqMODS NGC3184-Field2.acq

Mask position error.  Had to “reset slitmask”  Then it worked.  

~06:34
acqMODS NGC3184-Field2.acq

acquired fine,

~06:40
execMODS NGC3184-Field2.obs

~06:42

Collimation turned south.  It appears to be the same problem as yesterday, where the guide star was far towards the bottom of the “blue box” (acceptable guide field range.)  The wave front sensor seems to jump a row over, and then the collimation went to hell.  

We had to go to an on axis star to re-collimate, which was slow.

We changed the guide star in the acq, to one further from the bottom, which slightly occulted the field, but none of the slits.  

We emphasize that the problem was not a problem with the script, because the original guide star was within the acceptable range.
 
07:10:
acqMODS NGC3184-Field2.acq  (with new guide star)

07:20:
execMODS NGC3184-Field2.obs
seeing ~0.8

09:15:
seeing ~0.65

09:39:
acqMODS NGC3184-Field3.acq  (with new guide star)

there was a weird error on the first exposure, the image was taken with both the slit in and out.  I simply retook the slit mask image and aligned.  

~09:50
execMODS NGC3184-Field3.obs

11:02
seeing ~0.8

11:30
seeing ~0.7
some light cirrus is coming through.  We have decided to finish out the last two exposures.
12:04:
ND_COLLIS
acqMODS j0810HA+3.5.acq

12:12:
execMODS j0810.obs
seeing ~0.9”
The cirrus does not look “heavy” as stated in the readme to double the exposure time so we did not.  

12:39:
acqMODS j0957HA+1.5.acq

12:46:
execMODS j0957.obs
seeing ~0.8-0.9”

13:12:
acqMODS hz44.acq

13:21:
execMODS -b BlueGrating hz44.obs

No time for Dual Grating, but we have already had two dual grating std stars.