Date: 2021 June 16 UTC
LBTO Observer: O. Kuhn (LBTO)
Lead Partner Observer: J. Neustadt (OSU)
Other Partner Observers: R. Pogge, Anusha Pai, & Patrick Vallely (OSU)
Telescope Operator: Steve Allanson
Special Assistants: none(!)

Moon phase: 2d before first quarter, moonset at 2350 MST

Summary:

The smoke held off and three MODS programs were observed:
OSU_ASASSN/ASASSN20jq, UVa_FRAGN/J1603+18 and OSU_TOI1259b. Clouds
affected the 2nd half of the ASASSN20jq observation --- the extinction
was ~2.5 mags and we lost the guide star intermittently. Clouds
cleared and the seeing improved for the observation of J1603+18, and
OSU_TOI1259b was started with FWHMs on the MODS acquisition images
that were subarcsecond. The second set of acquisition images also had
subarcsecond seeing, consistent with the average FWHM from the WFS
images, although the FWHM on the guider images was typically 1-1.3",
sometimes puffing up to 1.5 or even 1.8". Of the second visit, only
the first exposure completed before 18-deg twilight and the sequence
of 3 finished just about 3 minutes after 12-deg twilight. The sky
background was getting bright during the host observations, but the
spectrum did not saturate.

Issues:

In the afternoon, Steve found that mirror ventilation had not been
cooling during the day; the modulating valves were not open. This
impacted the start of night DIQ. IT 8404. 

At the beginning of the night, about 20 minutes were lost to an SX
mirror panic due to runaway spherical. IT 5972.

The headers of about ½ of the mods1r files taken tonight have an extra
GRATNAME keyword with an incorrect value at the end. I noticed this
when running the quick-reduce pipeline. I did not notice this problem
with mods1b, mods2b or mods2r files, only mods1r files. IT 8406

Weather: 

There was some light cirrus at sunset and around 5:45 UT, small but
thick sparse clouds started to appear and we lost the guide stars
intermittently. This lasted until around 07 UT when it cleared up.

The particle counts stayed below the limit all night, despite the fires that
continue to rage all around us.


Overview (times are given in UT):

02:33 Sunset

02:37 Steve opened the enclosure. The particle counts are below the threshold for opening

02:50 Slewing to a pointing star near the first field, BD+33.

02:57 Collimating - FWHM ~ 1 SX and 1.4 DX, puffing up to ~1.6" at times.

Flux Star BD+33 2642 dual grating
20:23 acqBinoMODS bd332642.acq


20:32 Left secondary hexapod fault (Mirror not in position) during the
      MODS1 slit offset. Resent the offset from the gui.

03:33 12-deg twilight

03:35 execBinoMODS bd332642.obs 

OSU_ASASSN/ASASSN20jq

03:50 acqBinoMODS ASASSN20jq.acq

04:01 SX left primary mirror has panicked, probably runaway spherical.

04:11 18-deg twilight

04:15 Recovered from the panic and Steve is doing the pointing check.

04:18 acqBinoMODS ASASSN20jq.acq 

04:22 - during the acquisition, the SX side collimation is not
        converging well, WFS ~420 nm and then 740 nm (during 12)

04:32 execBinoMODS ASASSN20jq.obs

05:57 clouds - lost guide star

05:59 in the last few minutes of the 4th exposure, clouds came and we
      lost the guide star at times. The extinction was ~2.5 mags
  
06:41 Clouds have been passing through since 06 UT.  Seeing 1-1.4 arcsec

06:45 The guide star flux for the duration of the exposure and the
      allsky image taken at the end of the exposure are below
  

UVa_FRAGN/J1603+18

06:50 acqBinoMODS J1603+18.

      The PA was adjusted to match the parallactic angle and a 180 deg
      rotation was made to allow the choice of a brighter guide star,
      R=13.33 as there are quite a few clouds.

07:09 execBinoMODS J1603+18.obs

07:11 The sky has cleared for the start of this observation, and the
      seeing better (0.7"!)

07:47 Finished

OSU_TOI1259B

07:47 acqBinoMODS TOI1259b_visit1.acq

      On field images, the FWHM was 0.8" (m1r 29) and 0.9" (m2
      28). The guider FWHM is 1.2", however at airmass 1.453,
      atmospheric dispersion making the guider image appear elongated.

08:17 execBinoMODS TOI1259visit1.obs

      Seeing variable, ranging from 0.8-1-arcsec on WFS

09:46 acqBinoMODS TOI1259visit2.acq

      The guide star on SX did not fall within the acq field. Steve
      adjusted the pointing and we ran the acq script again at 09:48

      While the script was running, I lost my network connection. Came
      back in and it looked like the MODS2 gui was just reporting that
      it was writing the image, but the MODS1 script reported an error
      on 42 "go already in progress", I took a 2nd field image, 43.


      m2r 44 is a little bit smeared - the slit image jumped a few
      pixels on the detector and the maskpos = "EMPTY", but the object
      is centered in the slit.  When I got my x2go session on robs
      back up, I noticed that both modsDisp's had crashed. What would
      this have to do with my local internet connection? odd.

10:07 execBinoMODS TOI1259visit2.obs
      Seeing about 1-arcsec during 3x1200s white dwarf spectra

11:11 offset to the host star

11:37 finished, seeing was around 1-arcsec

10:30 18-deg twilight
11:08 12-deg twilight


11:45 The LBCs are off, MODS are asleep and the LUCIs remain with the
blank mask and blank filters. LUCI spectroscopic and imaging cals
remain to be done - internal cals may be done in the afternoon or at
the end of the night tonight, if not on Thursday.

12:08 Sunrise