LBT OSU/RC Partner OBserving Notes
Date: 2015 April 18 UTC 
Observers: OSURC
Support Astronomer: Olga Kuhn
Telescope Operator: Steve Allanson

SUMMARY:
MODS all night. 

Heavy clouds at the beginning of the night. Moderate seeing of ~1.3 but stabilizes to ~1.1 toward the middle of the night. Mostly clear sky. Mostly smooth sailing, except in the second half when we ran into some pointing and disk-writing issues. Took a while to fix but managed to squeeze in two more targets before closing up. 

Programs completed are:
UVa_mgiants25
UM_m101_2
UM_m101_5
OSU_ASASSN 14gh-host
UVa_mgiant39


Observing Notes: (All times are UTC unless otherwise noted)

00:45 starting luci darks for osu_srm programs

01:34 finished luci darks

01:43 opening up telescope

02:13 waking up mods
      pointing and collimating
      seeing jumpy (1.1 ~ 1.3)

02:39 Uva_mgiants25 medium seeing acq
      seeing ~1.1

02:49 mgiants25 medium seeing obs
      object visible after a quick sky subtraction - snr should be good

03:22 mgiants post-medium img obs
      seeing 1

03:25 UM_m101_2 acq
      seeing 1
      mostly clear 

03:41 UM_m101_2 observation
      seeing 1.3
      mostly clear

04:15 seeing 1.3

04:46 seeing got considerably worse, 1.8
      sky clear

05:11 clouds passing through
      guide star drops by ~3 mag
      seeing 1.6
      pause UM_m101_2 exposure

05:22 guide star climbing back to normal
      heavy clouds mostly gone, just thin cirrus
      seeing 1.50
      resume science exposure

06:06 feige66 acq

06:14 feige66 observation
      seeing 1
      clear sky

06:38 UM_m101_5 acq

06:52 UM_m101_5 observation
      seeing 1.07
      clear sky

07:30 seeing 1.11
      thin cirrus toward west

08:00 guide star drops ~2 mag, clouds coming in
      paused exposure
      seeing 1.25

08:10 clouds passed by, guide star back to normal magnitude
      resume exposure

08:40 seeing 1
      clouds on west side

09:20 OSU_m101_4 acq
      seeing 1.12
      clouds persisting on west

09:23 re-check telescope pointing 

09:26 re-acq OSU_m101_4
      Disk-writing confusion during acqusition, need to re-acq to fix but if re-acq then will not finish obs in time
      aborted and moved on to the next available target

09:37 OSU_ASASSN 14gh-host acq
      seeing 1.14

      persistent disk-writing problem where slit images not saved (same problem as above) and the "LastFile" is always 
      set to a unique name (always 150417M8.00q), but that unique file is not the slit image but a different science 
      spec. It seems like the file is consistently being stamped with the most recent time but retaining earlier data. 
 
      field image acquisition is fine, though. For this object acq and the one before, the first readout after an 
      acqusition is always the problem while subsequent readouts seem to be fine. 

10:05 re-acq osu_asassn 14gh-host

10:18 osu_asassn 14gh-host observation
      seeing 1.11
      some clouds

10:56 seeing 1

11:10 UVa_mgiant39 medium acq
      
11:21 UVa_mgiant39 observation
      seeing 1

11:43 seeing jumps to 1.43

11:55 UVa_mgiant39 post medium img
      seeing 1.34

12:02 closing telescope