Date: 2018 Jun 06 (UT) Observers: Jon Brown (OSU) TO: Geno Bechetti SA: Dave Thompson Moon phase: Summary: Reasonably smooth night all things considered. Most issues that arose were due to pointing and collimation troubles. Did a chunk of calibrations and MODS longslit all night. Minor technical issues: We were under the impression the adSec elevation limit had been lowered, but apparently that was not the case. Issue with the MODS2 VFlat lamp, the flats had only a couple hundred counts instead of several thousand. Calibrations: MODSPhotCal/gd153 bias8K, bias8K_1x2 (binned) bais3K, bias3K_1x2 (binned) grpixflats, grlamps, imflats (not for MODS2...) Completed Programs: MODS: ND_LLSgals/j1435a ND_LLSgals/j1435b ND_arsco/arsco OSU_ASASSN/PS110jh Details (All times UT): ---------------------------------- Plan: Plan is MODS all night. 01:00 - Going to run some afternoon cals. A note on the bias frames: while the ccdbin command is not 'sticky' in the sense instconfig resets to the default 1x1, if running biasNK.cal scripts serially, the binning parameters do not get reset between scripts. As a result, there's 10 3K bias frames binned 1x2, followed by 5 frames binned in the default 1x1. Additionally, MODS2 has 2 extra 8Kx3K bias frames. Here is the resulting filename extention/bias configuration: MODS1b: 0002 - 0006: 8Kx3K, ccdbin 1 1 0007 - 0011: 8Kx3K, ccdbin 1 2 0012 - 0021: 3Kx3K, ccdbin 1 2 0022 - 0026: 3Kx3K, ccdbin 1 1 MODS1r: 0002 - 0006: 8Kx3K, ccdbin 1 1 0007 - 0011: 8Kx3K, ccdbin 1 2 0012 - 0021: 3Kx3K, ccdbin 1 2 0022 - 0026: 3Kx3K, ccdbin 1 1 MODS2b: 0002 - 0008: 8Kx3K, ccdbin 1 1 0009 - 0013: 8Kx3K, ccdbin 1 2 0014 - 0023: 3Kx3K, ccdbin 1 2 0024 - 0028: 3Kx3K, ccdbin 1 1 MODS2r: 0002 - 0008: 8Kx3K, ccdbin 1 1 0009 - 0013: 8Kx3K, ccdbin 1 2 0014 - 0023: 3Kx3K, ccdbin 1 2 0024 - 0028: 3Kx3K, ccdbin 1 1 02:30 - sunset. Conditions looking not bad, at most, some very thin clouds, winds are calming. Humidity might become problematic around midnight, and the seeing isn't forecasted to be very good, but in general things are looking pretty good at the moment. Guider FWHM ~0.7". 03:35 - Starting gd153_dr.obs. This does dual grating and red grating, since some programs are configured to use red only. 04:10 - Moving to ND_LLSgals/j1435a. This will get fairly close to zenith but I think it will be fine. Conditions are great, seeing ~0.7", very clear, guide star flux steady. The readme for this program says the red grating configuration is used, but I now see the obs scripts are configured for dual grating. I'm going to err on the safe side and execute the obs script as-is, since the dichroic really doesn't impact the throughput above 5800A observer frame (~4400A in the rest frame for these galaxies). I can see some emission lines, but these targets are reeealy faint, and I'm not sure the exposure times are as long as they ought to be... When we moved to j1435b, the pointing on the right side was off, so we had to move away and correct. Also, on j1435a I acquired in the blue. The differential atmospheric refraction was pretty minimal, so this shouldn't be an issue. However, for j1435b, the position angle is such that the differential atmospheric refraction is more significant, so I'm going to acquire in the red just to be safe. We got a PCS OffsetTelescope alert; I'm going to take thru slit images after the blind offset and maybe we can see the bright galaxy... The bright galaxy is in the slit slightly offset as indicated in the finding chart, so as to get the fainter galaxies in the slit. 05:40 - Starting ND_LLSgals/j1435b. Conditions still looking quite good. Seeing is ~0.8". 06:15 - Moving to ND_arsco/arsco. Getting here a litte later than intended. Conditions holding, seeing is a higher this low in the sky (~1.1"). 07:20 - I had to run a fitsflush on the MODS1b+r and MODS2b. Since the exposures are 15 sec this ended up getting processed while images were being read out. In hindsight, probably should have paused during an exposure. This was between files ~50-75 on MODS1; MODS2 only had ~3 files backlogged, so that was resolved quickly. 08:00 - Everything still looking good. Temperature steadily drop, but humidity is staying at ~50%. 08:30 - When we tracked below elevation 30 deg, the shells RIP'd. We had gotten confirmation that the elevation limit was lowered to 25 deg, but apparently that was not the case... Anyway, we observed this target for ~2 hours (though we only got up to ~100 on the exposure sequence, since the MODS1 readouts have been taking quite a while all night). The shells RIP'd at UT 08:19; the collimation should have stayed mostly stable, but be aware that the last ~4 exposures could be affected. 09:00 - Attempting to get set up on PS110jh, but we're having some issues collimating. We got recollimated, but when we tried to acquire, there was a pointing limit error, turns out the pointing on the left had drifted and the wrong guide star was picked up. Had to reset pointing and re-acquire. 09:20 - Started OSU_ASASSN/PS110jh. Conditions are clear, but seeing has increased to 1+". 10:20 - Seeing blowing up to ~1.5-2". 11:15 - Ended up getting 5/6 exposures, should be good enough. 11:30 - Going to run some calibrations (pixflats, arcs, imflats). Something is up with the MODS2 flats, only ~400 counts.... Apparently there's been some troubles with the VFlat lamp, so these will probably be retried later.