Date: 2021 Mar 19 UTC LBTO Observer: O. Kuhn Lead Partner Observer: P. Vallely (OSU) Other Partner Observers: R. Pogge (OSU) Telescope Operator: David Gonzalez Huerta Moon phase: 2d before first quarter (28% illuminated) Summary: LBC all night in the OSU_monitor program high priority targets. Good transparency and seeing mostly sub-arcsecond with occasional puffs. LBC Sky flats at twilight and dawn. Completed targets: OSU_monitor: N2403, N2903, N4258, N4736, N4395, N4605, N3344, N5194, N3489, N3627, M82, M81, N3077, M101, N4214 and N4449. N4236 was observed between 18- and 12-deg twilight. Calibrations: LBC sky flats, closed-dome biases Details (All times UT): ---------------------------------- 18:33 sunset 18:35 opening the enclosure. 18:42 Slewing to a blank sky field for twilight sky flats. We need Us, B, V on LBCB and R on LBCR. It's likely we'll need both eve & morning twilight. 18:55 Starting Us + R flats. R will saturate, but the Us will be OK (first one or two may have too high counts). PA 0, then PA 180 set started, x2 and paired with CN. Us counts too low, CN ~10,000 (this was for an LBTB program) moving on. 19:04 PA 180 V+R - first ones are saturated. 19:07 PA 180 B+R test - still saturated. 19:12 PA 0 B+R ~0.5x exposure time scaling. LIGHTS WERE ON IN THE CHAMBER. Don't use the above flats. Lights off. 19:17 PA 0 B+R 40x scale factor. The B-Bessel flat has 10k but a bright star with saturation trails. We'll need to try again - this morning and again on Saturday morning. *** Start of Science Obser ing OSU_monitor/N2403 19:23 12-deg twilight 19:24 Slewing to focus field 19:29 dohybrid, /x2 --- the focus field has a ghost from a bright star, but it seems to be OK 19:35 Converged, but with a seeing estimate of 2.1 (blue) and 1.8 (red)... the pupils don't look very well defined so that seems accurate. 19:36 copointing (sentT was 0, had to redo). The blue image has FWHM 4.5 and the red 5.5, so the FWHM from the images are better than expected from the FPIA's seeing estimate. But the red may not be in optimum focus. 19:42 Starting the science on N2403. The DIMM read 1.03 on the previous field, consistent with IQ on copointing images. First science exposures on Blue have 4.8 and Red have 5.2-5.6 pix. A full set was done, but the red IQ was worse than the blue, and the estimated seeing with which FPIA converged was higher than seen by the DIMM and on the images. This was also before 18-deg twilight. We'll focus again and repeat this short exposure. 19:51 Back to copointing field for dofpia again. There is still a soft edge to the pupils but they are looking a bit better defined. ********************* 19:52 18-deg twilight ********************* 19:56 FPIA converged with est seeing 1.87 (blue) and 1.22 (red). 19:57 Starting the science on N2403 (repeat). Better IQ than before. Blue images have FWHM ~3.3 pix (0.75") and Red ~ 3 pix (0.7"). The mirrors are reaching equilibrium now whereas they were a bit off earlier. OSU_monitor/N2903 03:07 Slewing to N2903 focus field 03:09 dofpia - converged with est seeing 1.12 on Red but 2.09 on Blue (earlier it had a measurement of 1.44 which was below the threshold for sending Z11/Z22 corrections, and it sent a large Z22 correction - this may affect focus). 03:15 copointing 03:20 Starting the science on N2903. Guide star FWHM measurements are 1"(B)/0.8". First images have FWHM 3.4 pix (B, 0.75") and 3-4 (R - there is a gradient along chip 2, 0.7-0.9") 03:42 Focus/collim is falling apart. Stopping to focus/collim and editing script. N2903edit.ob --- 03:43 Focused/colimated and loaded the hand-edited OB. I made a mistake in hand-editing it and crashed LBC. 03:53 Restarting LBCs. Edited the OB on obs3 using the OBGUI (Note: the new OB is called OSUmonitorN2903.ob). But... I loaded the one for 2403 and not 2903 and slewed... 03:57 Focus/collimate again on N2903focus and then use the new OB (N2903.ob) 04:03 Starting to collect the remaining 3 integrations on N2903 (1 Uspec + 2 V-Bessel on Blue and 3 R-Bessel on Red). Uspec image has FWHM ~ 3.8 and R image has FWHM ~ 3.4. OSU_monitor/N4258 04:25 Slewing to focus field for N4258 04:27 dofpia 04:34 copointing 04:38 Starting science. First exposures have on average FWHM 4 (Blue) and 4.4 (Red). 05:16 finished - collimation held pretty well. OSU_monitor/N4736 05:16 Slewing to N4736 focus 05:17 dofpia 05:21 copointing 05:24 Starting science first exposures have FWHM on average of 4.4 (Blue) and 4.4 (Red). 05:41 finished OSU_monitor/N4395 05:41 Slewing to N4395 focus 05:42 dofpia 05:46 copointing 05:49 Starting science, guide star FWHMs are large - 1.5" (is star used for guiding a galaxy?) first exposures have FWHM on average of 5.8 (Blue) and 4.5 (Red) We're noting that these average values (computed as they are for allseeing) are larger than what imexam on individual stars gives. Perhaps a lot of extended emission regions are included as stars. 06:02 finished OSU_monitor/N4605 06:02 slewing to N4605 focus 06:03 dofpia - blue gives a large focus correction, consistent with it not being in great focus for the previous field. 06:08 copointing 06:11 Starting science. imexam on a star near optical axis → 3 pix (B) and 2.73 (Red). Average FWHMs on same images are 3.4 (Blue) and 3.8 (Red). Uspec exposure 061715 shows chip2 noise 06:27 finished OSU_monitor/N3344 06:27 slewing to N3344focus 06:29 dofpia - only 1 pupil found on blue at the outset, but several found after the first 4 correction was made. 06:39 Starting science The guide star on the blue doesn't look so well-collimated - this may be similar to what happened on N4395 where FWHM on blue was not worse than for the objects before and after. We're at almost 80 deg elevation. First images 064058 (Blue) and 064541 (Red) have FWHM of 5.55 and 3, respectively. LBCB is not well collimated; there appears to be some trefoil. We took the 2 B-Bessel images, 1 Uspec image and 3 R-Bessel images. I edited a new script to take the remaining 1 Uspec + 2 V-Bessel images on LBCB and the 3 R-Bessel images on LBCR (OSUmonitorN3344.ob). 06:56 dofpia 07:02 Starting science using OSUmonitorN3344.ob. The guide star on LBCB still looks ugly & poorly collimated. But FWHM on first blue image is ~4 pix so the focus/collim helped but it still looks like there's some trefoil. 07:12 ...And after a while the guide star started to come together. 07:19 finished OSU_monitor/N5194 07:19 Slewing to focus field 07:21 dofpia On the blue pupils, there is a "skirt" on one side. The est seeing on Blue has gone way up, to 2" now, but for Red, it is 0.5" and on the subsequent iteration est seeing on Blue went back to 1.2". 07:29 copointing 07:32 Starting science on N5194 First images have FWHM ~ 3 pix Images close to the end of the sequence have FWHM ~2.8 pix, so the collimation has been holding up well. 08:09 Finished OSU_monitor/N3489 08:10 Slewing to N3489 focus field 08:12 dofpia 08:16 copointing 08:19 Starting science on N3489. The FWHM on the guiders is ~1.2 however the est seeing from FPIA was 0.9-1 (blue) and 0.5 (red). The first images have FWHM ~3.8 (blue, avg 4.4) and 2.8 (red, avg 3.8). 08:57 finished. The focus held up mostly. OSU_monitor/N3627 08:58 Slewing to N3672 focus field 08:58 dofpia --- first pupil image with red was collimated, but blue required 4 iterations to converge. 09:05 copointing 09:07 Starting science First images have FWHM 4.3 (blue) and 2.8 (red). 09:34 FWHM 3.8 (blue) and 3.1 (red) 09:48 finished OSU_monitor/M82 09:49 Slewing to M82 focus field 09:51 dofpia 09:55 copointing 09:58 Starting science on M82 First images have FWHM 4.8 (blue) and 3.5 (red). Focus/Collimation held up pretty well - last images have FWHM 4.5 (blue) and 3.5 (red). OSU_monitor/M81 10:10 Starting science straightaway on M81 since it's so close to M82. 10:21 finished. OSU_monitor/N3077 10:24 dofpia on N3077 focus 10:28 Starting science on N3077 Images have FWHM ~ 5.5 (blue) and 4.5 (red). 10:38 finished OSU_monitor/M101 10:38 Slewing to M101 focus field 10:39 dofpia - actually 10:41 (forgot to stop copoint images) 10:50 Starting science First images have FWHM ~3.4 pix 11:15 4.3 pix (blue) and 3.3 pix (red). 11:19 finished OSU_monitor/N4214 11:20 Slewing to N4214 focus. 11:22 dofpia --- no good pupils were found on the blue image in the first iteration, and it found only one in the second iteration. 11:31 Converged. 11:31 Skipped the copointing (ZD = 45.7 deg) 11:31 Starting science on N4214 11:42 finished OSU_monitor/N4449 11:42 Slewing to focus field 11:43 dofpia - the red side is taking a while to converge. 11:53 Starting the science. I skipped the copointing as the field is low and we're running low on time. First images have FWHM 3.4-4 (blue) and approx ~4.2 (from one star - Red). Second set have better FWHM ~3.5 on both. 12:05 finished ********************* 05:02 18-deg twilight ********************* OSU_monitor/N4236 (after 18-deg twilight) 12:05 Slewing to N4236 focus 12:08 dofpia 12:11 Starting the science FWHM ~ 4.2 and 3.9 12:24 finished -------------------------------- Calibrations LBC twilight sky flats 12:28 Slewing to Blank field 15+53 to wait. 12:31 12-deg twilight 12:40 V+R test exposures → 500 c above bias in 1s 12:44 Started series of V+R flats. PA=0, scale factor of 5x. From 3rd pair on. 12:49 V+R test at PA=180. 12:51 Started series of V+R flat. PA=180, scale factor of 2.5x. All 5 pairs are OK. 12:55 B+R test at PA=180 12:57 Started series of B+R flats, PA=180, scale factor = 1x. 12:59 3rd B-Bessel was high, so I resumed the series with scale factor 0.5x. We didn't get 5 pairs for B+R, but a few. 13:02 Started a series of Us+R flats, PA=180, scale factor = 1x. Saturated. Tried scale factor 0.2x (~1 sec) - 38k counts. Tried scale factor 0.12x lbcb 130734 has ~ 40000 counts. We got a nice set of V+R flats, and a few at B but we need to get Us still. We'll plan to try Us+R and B+R Saturday morning. 13:21 sunrise 13:30 David closed the chamber. Biases 13:30 25 biases. LBCR ones are showing the horizontal banding.