Observers: Steven Villanueva, Roberta Humphreys, Rick Pogge
Support Astronomer: Michelle Edwards
Telescope Operator: Geno Bechetti

Summary

Full night with MODS1.

At sunset, heavy cloud and high winds over limits.  We started with
calibrations at twilight in a closed dome.  We're hoping to get some
clearer skies and calmer winds later, in the meantime, we caught up on
flat and lamps for the long-slit programs.

Wind was threatening most of the night but stayed below limits after
we could finally open.  Clouds gradually cleared out and gave way to
mostly clear skies later, probably never photometric, though.

Seeing was awful - after a brief interval at 1.1 arcsec, is was
regularly 1.5-2.0+ arcsec most of the night.  We ended up mostly
shooting flux stars (which don't care about such seeing and are still
useful on good nights), and the few programs that are alleged to be
tolerant of bad seeing.  Wind forced us to close starting at ~1040UTC
and got progressively stronger.


...


Details: All times are UTC unless otherwise indicated

MODS1 Calibrations

01:35 - Started instrument calibs
        grpixflats - dual, red, blue
        grlamps - dual, red, blue
        slitflats (dual 0.3/0.6/1.0/1.2)
        imflat_r - red SDSS r for acq image flats
        slitflats (red 1.0; blue 0.3)
        
04:30 - Getting clearer and wind is staying below limits (but still
        running 10-15m/s).

04:40 - On sky, setting up telescope

04:50 - collimation star with wind to our back.  Seeing 1.5-arcsec and
        variable mirror delta-Temp with air could be better, so we
        could

05:05 - GD71 Standard Star. Still cirrus, but good location wrt. wind.
        Could help w/collimation, too, as the other star was at El=52,
        this is El=68

05:12 - On the star, seeing 1.2 arcsec in the acq image.  Running the
        full calib to get at least one primary standard in grating and
        prism all modes for reference.  Others won't get the full
        treatment.  Seeing running 1.2-1.3 arcsec during spectra.
        Note cirrus are moving through, but thin.

06:14 - G191B2B Standard Starw, just the grating modes.  Seeing is
        rather puffy during this object, but still around 1.2-1.3
        arcsec.

06:55 - OSU_ETG/NGC2768.  This program is tolerant of poor seeing.  It
        is also in a favorable position relative to the wind, which
        still dogs us.

        Seeing not great, 1.5 arcsec and somewhat bloomy.  Got as good
        a slit center as we could.  The rest is in the hands of the
        telescope. Thin cirrus is present, and the humidity has
        started to drop, accompanied by a slight rise in temperature.
        The program said it is poor seeing tolerant, this may test
        that assertion...

07:30 - 2nd image (mods1b.20140105.0077) has a funny readout artifact
        on quadrant 2 (lower right).  Not seen on the first image, or
        in subsequent images.  Seeing gets a little better through the
        sequence.

07:56 - Started second sequence of images because of effects of crappy
        seeing, a readout glitch on one blue image, and cirrus
        combined to make in incomplete

08:06 - mods1r.20140105.0081.fits clobbered by a full-frame readout
        glitch.  Reminiscent of an old sequencer readout problem.
        This is the same artifact seen back at the start of 2013
        December in IT#4956 reported by Dave Thompson.

08:10 - wind picking up, but still below the limits.  We'll be
        watching it.  Wind is making the seeing puffy again.

08:40 - Feige 34 Standard Star.  Seeing now about 2-arcsec and
        continued windy.  Not much to do but a standard star.
        Transparency is better, humidity dropped from 50% to 10% in an
        hour.  Grating modes only.

09:30 - Seeing still awful (2+ arcsec), shooing NGC2617 thru a
        5-arcsec slit because all we need is lots of light.  We're out
        of bad seeing programs for MODS, and the weather forecast is
        more promising the next 2 nights.

10:35 - Wind is gusting over the limits so we are closing the doors
        for now.

10:42 - While we're closed, taking 3K, Prism, and 8K biases.  Wind has gotten
        stronger.

12:00 - Stil above limits, we're done.  Taking some LUCI calibs as
        pratice for tomorrow when we plan on starting with LUCI.

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