Night report 20100725

Nightlog 2010-07-25

SA: Tim
SO: None
Others: Hitesh, Jonathan, Ted

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Summary
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ted worked on FP stuff most of the day and through the evening until about 2300. tim assisted in the afternoon and evening. details to follow in separate note. jonathan and hitesh performed a mirror align test and then tim opened up, pointed at az=180, and let the starcam take images every 3 minutes from 1930 until 0325. analysis and results to follow later. tim also ran the seeing monitors (mass-dimm + timDIMM) from 0000 until 0315 when high winds kicked up and started blowing scopes around too much.

Night report 20100723 & 20100724

Nightlog 2010-07-23

SA: Tim
SO: None
Others: Hitesh, Charl, Ockert, Chris, Martin, Ted

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Summary
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no SALT operations other than hitesh doing a quick mirror alignment to test something. tim and ted worked on FP stuff until 2330 and then tim worked on mass-dimm/timdimm stuff until 0330.

Nightlog 2010-07-24

SA: Tim
SO: None
Others: Hitesh, Charl, Ockert, Ted

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Summary
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ted worked on FP stuff most of the day and through the evening. tim assisted in the afternoon and evening. charl gave a tour to the group from university of central lancashire and exercised the structure as part of the exercise. with an assist from hitesh tim opened up and did some starcam observations with the structure and tracker both fixed in position. got just under two hours of data before being forced to close due to humidity at 2040 SAST.

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Results
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the behavior of the previous starcam results led me to believe that the non-repeatability probably has something to do with temperature effects. namely, the clear, dry conditions we were experiencing means the sky is very cold and different parts of the structure will couple to that differently depending on how they're shielded by the dome. to test this, we took some data tonight with the structure fixed at an azimuth of 150 degrees and the tracker locked down at (0,0). in this configuration with the dome open we ran a script to take a starcam image once a minute. we were only able to get just shy of 2 hours of data due to high humidity, but even this was enough to show significant drifts in both elevation and azimuth (see attached plots). the drifts amount to 1.1' in elevation and 2.7' in azimuth. we didn't open the louvers or condition the chamber well so this probably exaggerates the effects of temperature variations, but it does show how significant they can be and the results are consistent with what we observed in our previous tests.

Night Report 2010-07-22

SA: Amanda
SO: Fred, Zolisa, Siphelo
Others: Tim, Charl, Ockert, Deon, Chris, Morgan, Laure

Summary
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*Took more StarCam data to characterize polar misalignment.
This went mostly smoothly, with two structure position losses.

*Winds were too high to take SAMS data.

*Fred's last official night as an SO! Thanks for all of your hard
work and best of luck.

Conditions
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

evening midnight morning
Weather: clear clear clear
Wind Dir 10m (speed; km/h): 327(50.9) 303(57.8) 285(53.5)
Seeing(FWHM SALT images): -
Photometric: no no no
RH(%): 22.7 38.6 40.7
Temp (2m): 12.1 8.4 8.2
T-Dp (ext.): 20.7 13.3 12.6

Sunset-rise (SAST): 17:57-07:21
Moon rise-set (SAST; phase): 14:33-05:37 (92%)

More pointing data

We took more pointing data later on during the night of 20100720, but this time in a more careful manner. We performed large moves back to Az = 0 several times during the course of taking the previous data which we think probably created the large amount of scatter. This data was taken by making small 10 degree moves in Azimuth in the same direction between each observation. We took one set moving in a clockwise direction from Az=0 and another set moving counter-clockwise from Az=360. As we hoped, taking data in this way shows the systematic cyclical signature much more clearly. Recall that for our experiment the elevation is fixed by leaving the tracker locked at (0,0) and thus should remain constant.

Summary Night Report 20100721

Nightlog 2010-07-21

SA: Amanda
SO: Fred
Others: Tim, Siphelo, Zolisa, Deon, Morgan, Chris, IQ team, Nic, Ted,
Hitesh

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Summary
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* Took more StarCam data to investigate polar misalignment. A new
plot is posted on the blog that shows the results from last night.

* Ran six tracks as though we were undertaking normal
observing. Three tracks ended abnormally, all with fatal following
errors.

* Hitesh ran SAMS tests. Conditions were beautiful, so hopefully he
got alot of good data!

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Conditions evening midnight morning
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Weather: clear clear clear
Wind Dir 10m (speed; km/h): 0 (20.5) 338(30.7) 329(36.2)
Seeing(FWHM SALT images): -
Photometric: yes yes yes
RH(%): 19.0 23.1 27.5
T-Dp (ext.): 22.9 20.0 17.6

Sunset-rise (SAST): 17:56 - 07:22
Moon rise-set (SAST; phase): 13:42-04:44 (85%)

Summary Night Report 20100720

Nightlog 2010-07-20

SA: Amanda
SO: Fred
Others: Siphelo, Zolisa, Deon, Morgan, Ockert, Charl, Chris, Laure,
IQ team, Nic, Ted, Hitesh

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Summary
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* Took some data on mirror alignment degradation at beginning of night
(with goal of investigating how much alignment degrades as
environmental conditions change). Hitesh took SAMS data later.

* Got alot of data with the StarCam to characterize polar
misalignment. Tim's initial results show a strong sinusoidal
variation in the azimuth and elevation of the actual pointings with
respect to the telescope positions. (see plot in blog)

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Conditions evening midnight morning
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Weather: clear clear clear
Wind Dir 10m (speed; km/h): 102(14.9) 81(11.9) 26(20.9)
Seeing(MASS/DIMM): -
Photometric: yes yes yes
RH(%): 24.3 26.6 27.4
T-Dp (ext.): 19.5 18.0 17.6

Sun set-rise (SAST): 17:56 - 07:22
Moon rise-set (SAST; phase): 12:51-03:46 (68%)

20100720 Pointing residual plot

20100720. First plot of the differences between the azimuths and
elevations derived from astrometric fits to StarCam data and those
based on the telescope location (tracker at 0, structure told to go to
various azimuths). These data should help us characterize any
polar misalignment of the pier. The data were taken
in steps of 30 degrees, with 10 degree offsets between three different
sets, all in a counterclockwise direction. (plot courtesy of Tim!)

StarCam image of beta Cen (with astrometric solution; 20100719)

Summary Night Report 20100719

Nightlog 2010-07-19

SA: Amanda
SO: Fred
Others: Tim, Sophelo, Zolisa, Deon, Morgan, Ockert, Charl & Chris at
beginning, IQ team, Nic & Ted

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Summary
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* We had a mostly successful night, taking data with the StarCam for
the pointing model and doing SAMS testing. Note that we can't actually
take accurate pointing model data until the autocollimator is back on,
because the telescope points only within range of the autocollimator
(so the displayed telescope position is not the same as the OPT target
position). For now, we are setting the tracker to all zeros and moving
the telescope to take images at different azimuths. This should test
variations around the pier.

* We ran into trouble with multiple SOMMI errors, a serious tracker
failure, and a new structure error (where the radial plug pulled out
because we actually reached an extreme position). The latter was due
to the same issue that caused us to shut down early: the structure
lost encoder counts and thus did not know its location.

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Conditions evening midnight morning
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Weather: clear clear clear
Wind Dir 10m (speed; km/h): 331(15.6) 342(15.5) 335(17.9)
Seeing(MASS/DIMM): 1.17 -
Photometric: yes yes yes
RH(%): 24.8 27.5 30.0
T-Dp (ext.): 19.1 17.8 16.7

Sun set-rise (SAST): 17:55 - 07:23
Moon rise-set (SAST; phase): 12:09-02:44 (68%)

Summary Night Report 20100715

Report for night 2010-07-15

SA: Encarni
SO: Patrick
Others: Deon, Morgan, Hitesh, the IQ team, Chris, Zolisa, Siphelo
========================================================

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Notes and messages
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* Did not open up tonight because of the weather. SAMS tests all night.

* EDS external weather conditions got stuck. BMS needed restarting to
get them back.

Summary Night Report 20100714

Report for night 2010-07-14

SA: Encarni
SO: Patrick
Others: Deon, Morgan, Hitesh, the IQ team
========================================================

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Notes and messages
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* Did not open up tonight because of the weather. SAMS tests all night.

* ELS does not show alarm/warning for rain, but the EDS does show the
correct status.

Summary Night Report 20100713

Report for night 2010-07-13

SA: Encarni
SO: Patrick, Operonomer Hannah
Others: Deon, Hitesh, Morgan, Chris, Zolisa, Siphelo, Charl and the IQ team (Lisa, Francois, Darragh, James)
========================================================

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Notes and messages
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* The last temp control unit for the aircon, which we installed last
night in the control room, is now dead. And it's freezing in here!!!! :(

* ELS issues:

During the day we had dew point warning on SOMMI which was clearly wrong.

Text messages are being sent by the ELS to the standby phone
which are irrelevant (SAMS comms lost, DEW point warnings
etc). This needs to be fixed before the standby person drowns the phone...

Night temp variance was yellow both nights, but the temps were
nicely equalized and temp gradients are flat as a pancake.

* Aircon for conditioning the building during the day does not work
due to low levels of glycol. Opening louvers early instead.

* Video feed from star tracker is working!! Thanks Charl and Hitesh!
Erm.. you do know I don't have a kingdom to swap for the camera,
right? ;)

* Tracker brakes release error three times. Twice it recovered
by itself, the other time it did not and did not move, although reporting
green and SLEW.

Summary Night Report 20100712

Report for night 2010-07-12

SA: Encarni
SO: Patrick
Others: Deon, Charl, Hitesh
========================================================

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Notes and messages
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* SPAIN ARE WORLD CHAMPIONS!!! FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS!!!! Hip hip hurrah! :)

* Both Temperature control modules for aircon in the control room and
the computer room are broken. We "stole" the newly arrived one
intended for the computer room and installed in the control room.

* External dewpoint alarm triggered when T-ext=10?

* With nearly every point to target, we get an error on a fine igloo
alarm. Allegedly it's a dodgy sensor so we dutifully ignored it (it's
hardly going to affect our IQ anyway!).

* Again, approaching CCAS clockwise the structure sometimes doesn't
quite make the correct az (59.986 instead of 60.04) so no spots for
mirror alignment. An X instrument shift of -300 brings spots into
view.

* Structure CCW limit 1 reached but structure does NOT go onto fault
and reamains ready. It won't move though, so it should be a fault.

* Had a 'too many loops' followed by 'not enough rects' error so had
to restart CCAS.

* Had one fatal following error on tracker that aborted our track. OK on repoint. Charl, temp on the rho motor was OK.

Summary Night Report 20100708

Report for night 2010-07-08

SA: Alexei
SO: Fred
Others: Siphelo, Zolisa
========================================================

Summary:

1. We continue our checks of alignment and its degradation.
Segment 65 is out of the loop.

We worked only with Side1 tonight just to see how the method works.
Side1+Side2 alignment degradation have to be checked during next weeks.

I loged rms of Side1 altogether with temperature and humidity at 2m.

Unfortunately, because structure errors all the time, we were
need to put structure down and start it again. So, our results
of the degradation are take it into account somehow.

2. Teaching of new SOs was continued during the day and the night.

Summary Night Report 20100707

Report for night 2010-07-07

SA: Alexei
SO: Fred
Others: Siphelo, Zolisa, Sharl
========================================================

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Notes and messages
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Summary:

1. We continue our checks of alignment.

2. Teaching of new SOs was continued during the night.

3. Germany lost to Spain 0:1 in the semifinal ...

Summary Night Report 20100706

Report for night 2010-07-06

SA: Alexei
SO: Fred
Others: Hitesh, Deon, Siphelo, Zolisa
========================================================

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Notes and messages
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Summary:

1. SPS error was generally fixed by Hitesh and Deon during day time.
Segments 3 and 41 were disconnected.

2. Two new SOs arrived today and Fred started teaching.

3. The alignment is working in general, but we need good conditions
to make it properly.

Summary Night Report 20100705

Report for night 2010-07-05

SA: Alexei
SO: Fred
Others: Hitesh, Deon
========================================================

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Notes and messages
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Summary:

First try to align mirrors. First half was aligned,
but finally we have got SPS hardware problem which
have to be studied tomorrow by Hitesh and Deon.