Date: 2020 July 14 UTC
Observers: Garnavich (ND) & Kuhn (LBTO)
TO: David Gonzalez (Tucson) + Raymond Reyes (LBT)
SA: Olga Kuhn

Moon phase: dark

Summary:

Three targets were observed with the LBCs but it was quite a difficult
night and we struggled with collimation of LBCR. We opened after sunset
due to lingering clouds, and when we opened, the ambient temperature
dropped rapidly, as anticipated, but then overtook the mirrors and the
glass had to cool. The SX side coped much better than the DX and
delivered images consistent with the DIMM seeing, but we were never able
to collimate on the DX side. It is not clear whether these data will be
useful.

There were clouds at the start of the night, but these cleared up nicely
until more clouds started to move in around 05 UT, particularly
affecting observations after ~05:30 UT.

Ran allseeing at the end of the half-night


Calibrations: 

None - sky flats intended by clouds at sunset


Completed Observations: 

OSU_monitor: M101, NGC5474, NGC6503


Details (All times UT):
----------------------------------

01:45-01:55 I ran up the LBCs and took a couple of test biases.

02:35 Clouds at sunset, so we are skipping the twilight sky flats and
not opening immediately. However, it does look like it will get better.

03:11 Launched a set of 25 bino Biases while waiting for clouds to
clear. Dome is dark and telescope stationary.

03:37 Opening the enclosure. 

Slewed to M101 focus.  Some clouds, but getting better.

03:50 Launched dohybrid on M101 focus. It converged, but there is no
inner hole in the LBCR pupils. The glass is about 0.8C below the
ambient.

04:02 Copointed. We are repeating dohybrid since the pupils did not look
good on the red side. The copointing images gave FWHM 6.5 pix Blue and
Red.

04:10 The red pupils still show no inner hole and FPIA is sending the
incorrect corrections.  David is clearing act optics on DX and I am
repeating dohybrid, /x2 (to use 32-sec integrations instead of
16-sec). The focus/collim routine is not adding spherical corrections,
but it is not removing them either. We just have spherical because of
the temperature gradient on the mirror.

04:23 "S" given to gracefully exit dohybrid. We'll take data and monitor
the IQ.

04:24 Starting the M101 OB. DIMM seeing ~1.1". FWHM on guider 2.5" - a
galaxy or is the IQ that bad? No, the FWHM on the red image is ~6.5-7
pixels (1.5") and on the blue ~8 pixels (1.8").

04:41 Second pair: Blue 043135 7.8 pix (1.7"). Red 043123 6-7 pix still. The 3rd pair (0437xx) has finished and the image quality does not appear to be getting worse, at least.
On the 4th pair (0443xx), Blue has FWHM ~7.2 pix and Red ~6 pix (7pix near the top of chip 2 and on chip 4). 

04:55 A few more clouds are visible now on the all sky camera.

04:56 Slewing to NGC 5474 focus field. Running dohybrid. Again there is
no inner hole on the Red pupils. David is clearing active
optics. Running dohybrid, /x2.

05:15 David cleared active optics again because the red side had built
up negative spherical aberration. Running again and will "S" if needed
to stop FPIA when the pupils look ok.  I hit "S" when the blue looked
good and the red still did not have an inner hole.

05:25 Copointing.

05:28 Starting the N5474 OB. DIMM seeing ~1.4" now. On guide chip, star
FWHM are ~1.7" (Blue) and 2" (Red).
 
First pair, 0529xx: Blue 6.6 pix and Red >~7.2. We were not able to
collimate well on the red side.

Second, 0534xx: Blue 7.2 pix (1.6") and Red (>~9 pix). The DIMM seeing
has gone up to between 1.5-2" now, so the blue is consistent with the
DIMM while Red is just not well-collimated.

Third, 0540xx: Blue (Uspec) ~7.8 pix (1.75") but Red >~10pix.

05:57 The all-sky is nearly full of clouds now but there are some
holes. N5474 is not in a hole. The last pair of exposures is heavily
affected by the clouds.

06:06 Slewing to NGC 6503 focus. David cleared active optics. I am
running dohybrid, /x2.  dohybrid claimed it converged but the red pupil
still shows no hole and a strong illumination gradient.
 
David is giving +1000 Z7 and +500 Z11 and I am taking a single
extra-focal pupil image. The corrections we made had an effect but not a
large one.

06:27 Running dohybrid, /x2 from here. Stopped it with "S" when blue
pupils looked good but red still did not show the inner hole.

06:34 Copointing. The copointing script uses a non-zero PA so it took a
bit longer to verify the field. These are bright stars, though, but I
wanted to make sure I had the correct one.

06:40 Starting the N6503 OB. There are some clouds over the field.
Guide star FWHMs are 1.7" (Blue) and 2.6" (Red).  First pair of images
7.7 pix (Blue) and 9.6 pix (Red) - similar to the previous field. Red
just is not collimating.
 
06:56 Repeating the OB to get a few more exposures before handover. The
clouds are closing in so we are skipping the refocusing.  First pair
(0650xx) has 7.2 pix (Blue) and ~10 pix (Red).

07:06 Cloud cover is ~80% now. (Below is an all-sky image from
07:02). It was fairly cloudy at sunset, but improved quite a lot. Then
around 05 UT clouds started to come in again.

07:12 The OB finished and we are reconfiguring for the second half of
the night.

07:45 I turned off the LBCs.