Date: 2021 Feb 11 UTC LBTO Observer: Olga Kuhn Lead Partner Observer: Hayley Williams (Minnesota) Other Partner Observers: Rick Pogge (OSU) Telescope Operator: Steve Allanson Moon phase: New Moon Summary: MODS and LBC tonight. Late opening (40min after twilight) due to continued forest service controlled burns in the Gailuros mountains, then closed early due to clouds, losing the last 2 hours of the night. SEeing was 1.1-1.2-arcesc at the start and end, with episodes of 1.6-2-arcsec seeing in between. MODS programs: OSU_ASASSN: ASASSN15df, ELL5, ASASSN20jq LBC programs: OSU_monitor: I2574, N4826, N5474, N3077, and M82 Calibrations: LBC sky flats at dusk before smoke closure LUCI closed dome flats and arcs at dawn Details (All times UT): ---------------------------------- 01:05 Sunset: Smoke layer is visible just below the summit, but after sunset the particle detector showed it was coming over the site. 01:16 Borderline situation, but smoke smell is minimal and there is no ash. Steve is opening the enclosure. 01:27 starting Us + F flats. Got a good set of Us flats at one PA. 01:32 starting V+I flats. 15k + 20k at the start. Got a set at PA=0 and going for a set at PA=180 now. 01:42 done with flats. No smell of smoke but we're on the edge. 01:43 Steve is reconfiguring for binocular MODS and closing the enclosure because of the smoke situation. 01:56 12-deg twilight 02:11 Still closed due to the smoke, but around 02:25, there was a dramatic drop in RH, rise in temperature and a drop in particle counts. 02:25 18-deg twilight 02:39 The 0.5mic counts dropped by almost x1000 in the last 18 minutes. 02:36 Opening up 02:41 Open, and going to do a pointing and collimation check near the first target, G191-B2B. FWHM on guiders is 1.3/1" for SX/DX. G191-B2B dual grating FWHM on guiders is 1.17/1.07" 02:59 start G191-B2B spectra FWHM ~ 1.09/1.04" and airmass 1.065 03:12 done 03:15 OSU_ASASSN ASASSN15ti The red circle in the ASASSN15ti_finder.png file does not match the yellow circle in the modsView finder. On the modsView finder, there is nothing at the coordinates, but we'll see what the field image looks like. Given that there is some doubt and the integration will take over 2 hours, we tried to call the PI but there was no answer. Moving on to another target. 03:33 OSU_ASASSN ASASSN15df The object is very extended and faint. 03:52 start spectra. Airmass 1.772 and seeing is ~1.9" on average at the start of the integration. 04:21 Seeing is now 1" on average. 06:08 OSU_ASASSN ELL5 Changed PA to -5 deg (current PA + 10min for acq + 10 min for half of the total exposure + detector overheads) acq exptimes are 60-sec but star is R=13.0, stopped field image after about 5 sec and readout 06:19 start of spectra Seeing ~1.5" at the start. Airmass 1.463. 06:29 seeing is blowing up to >2" now. 06:50 OSU_ASASSN ASASSN20jq.acq The chosen guide star appeared to be very faint and it would have been hard to collimate. The catalog magnitudes R=13.09, but B=17.19 may be a clue? Aborted the acquisition script. The abort signals were not sent and the exposure continued. I aborted it through the exposure. This may be what led to the "Go already in progress" yesterday after I "aborted" the acquisition script upon noticing that the guide star was a double. The script may not have been aborted then, but I did not notice. Selected the star with R=12.32, B=13.18 - the probe shadow appears to be just at the bottom of the central slit segment, but it does prevent use of the bottom slit segments for sky. The only other options, however, have R=15.86 and R=16.08 and with this seeing, they may not be so work. Seeing is 2" on average during the acquisition. 07:11 start of spectra 07:23 The average seeing is ~1.7/1.6" but it has been bouncing up to 1.9-2". 07:49 Near the start of the 3rd exposure, the seeing has improved. THe average is now 1.4/1.2". ============================== 08:04 Reconfiguring to the LBCs 08:20 OSU_monitor I2574 Running the I2574focus.ob. There are two obs I2574focus.old.ob and I2574focus.ob - the date in the *focus.ob is 20210104, so used that. FPIA only found 1-2 pupils. Going to the *old.ob. I2574focus.old.ob is better, but there is a ghost from the bright star and FPIA picks some of the structure from the ghost as detections/pupils (see the image below, where the white boxes are drawn around detections). Fortunately, the fits to the bonafide pupils are good and there are enough of these that FPIA, since it uses the median values of the quantities that characterize the pupil (diameter of outer edge, of inner hole, ellipticity, displacement of inner hole wrt outer, etc.) should not be skewed by these false detections. Neither OB is ideal, but the old one is better. 08:44 Started the science integration. r 1.25", but blue has 1.35", but the 2nd blue image has FWHM 10 (and a halo around the stars - the halos we saw with Uspec years ago?) Need to check more images, but both B and V ones have FWHMs of 6 and 7 and look normal, consistent with seeing. 09:00 OSU_monitor N4826 focus/collimate 09:04 copoint 09:06 Starting the science integrations. FWHM ~ 4.5-6.5 pix (1-1.3") The Uspec image does not show the halos. 09:45 completed 09:46 OSU_monitor N5474 09:48 first dofpia image 09:52 copointing images taken 09:54 starting the science integrations b 095533 has FWHM ~ 1.1" (5 pix FWHM) and r 095531 has FWHM ~ 1.2" (5.4 pix). 10:15 the bank of clouds coming from the NW looks like it is almost here according to the satellite map. It does not look that bad where we are pointing. ~10:30 finished 10:30 OSU_monitor N3077 Focus/collimation took 2 iterations 10:36 taking the copointing images 10:39 Starting the science integrations 10:48 ended. 10:51 OSU_monitor M82 FPIA took 1 iteration to converge. Clouds are coming and this field is very close to the previous one. Abandoning copointing. 10:56 Starting science integrations. 11:05 The clouds are now in our line of sight. 11:15 OSU_monitor N4214 This is in a clearer part of the sky. 11:15 dofpia - first there were 1-2 pupils, then none found. 11:20 Pausing for clouds. We tried the field of N3489, but again the pupils faded as we ran FPIA. Note that twice when FPIA has not found any pupils, it reports that no good pupils are found but then hangs. Then there is a popup from the LBC UI which says "Busy, command rejected" - but no command was being sent. Finally the prompt appears in FPIA to enter "Q" to abort. "Q" gets out of the loop but FPIA does not back out the spherical. 11:58 Steve is closing the doors due to clouds 12:42 18-deg twilight 14:02 Sunrise ================================ Closed Dome Calibrations LUCI First, checking the field stop alignment with the N375 camera and no mask. Flats and Arcs for OSU_XMDs and UM_Flashlights Note the first set of LUCI2 calibs for OSU_XMDs (0003 to 0019) are all bad as the grating was not in the correct position (this has happened before). Toggled from the grating to mirror and back again. Now it is in the correct position. Good calibs start with images luci2*.0021.fits