Nightlog 2010-10-30

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others:

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Summary
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=> Some IQ observations during first half of the night.
Seeing was around 1.8". After that humidity raised fast.

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Nightlog 2010-10-29

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others:

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Summary
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=> Some IQ observations during first half of the night with clouds around.
Seeing was around 1.8", but variable.

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Nightlog 2010-10-28

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others:

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Summary
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=> Some IQ observations during first half of the night.
Seeing was around 2.0"

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Nightlog 2010-10-27

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Bad Weather

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Summary
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=> High humidity and clouds - did not open up.

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Nightlog 2010-10-26

SA: Encarni
SO: Zolisa
Others: Alexei, Charl, Hamish

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Summary
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. Stable conditions and low humidity, but disappointingly the seeing
stayed > 2.5" all night. Some through-focus sequences, all with Rho=0

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Nightlog 2010-10-25

SA: Encarni
SO: Zolisa
Others: Charl, Chris, Eben, Phil, Linda and NRF job evaluation

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Summary
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. Raced the humidity for a set of in-focus images at the beginning of
the night, but we lost the race. High humidity all night.

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Nightlog 2010-10-24

SA: Encarni
SO: Zolisa
Others:

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Summary
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. High humidity all night - never opened.

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where is all of the IQ data?

it turns out we were really fortunate to have gotten a few hours of good seeing early in our on-sky IQ testing. the seeing as measured by the upgraded Sutherland DIMM (now dubbed 'timDIMM') has been rather sub-par since the end of july:

the median seeing for this period (20-7 through 1-10) was 1.64" (corrected to zenith). previous studies of the SAAO site found median seeing values around 1" or slightly better. in fact, earlier in the year the SLODAR telescope measured a median total seeing of 1.08" during the period from mid-february until mid-april when it was shipped back to la palma. there is some question of the calibration of the timDIMM results compared to the same system using the old camera as well as compared to results from the other SAAO telescopes such as the 1.9-meter. much of that can be ascribed to its location and to its being very close to the ground, however. the timDIMM seeing has also agreed with the FWHM in SALT images fairly well so far. hopefully things will improve soon.....

Nightlog 2010-10-23

SA: Encarni
SO: Zolisa
Others: Eben, Charl

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Summary
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. Cloudy and high-humidity. No data tonight.

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Nightlog 2010-10-22

SA: Encarni
SO: Zolisa
Others: Jonathan

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Summary
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. Attempted some IQ tests but technical problems and high-humidity
prevented us from getting a decent set.

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Nightlog 2010-10-21

SA: Encarni
SO: Zolisa
Others:

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Summary
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. High humidity and high winds - did not open up.

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Telescope off-line for engineering work

SALT is currently off-line to carry out some engineering work to the rho stage among other things. Night-time work will resume on 21 October.

Nightlog 2010-10-04

SA: Paul
SO: Siphelo
Others: Martin

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Summary
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- Super cloudy at the start of the evening, not sure if such a
meteorological term exists... Had a bit rain during the night. Cleared
towards the end of the night but not enough to open.
No data :(

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Nightlog 2010-10-03

SA: Paul
SO: Siphelo
Others: Hitesh

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Summary
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- Clouds during most the evening, high humidity and ridge cloud at the end. We
didn't get much done tonight except for testing some software.

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Nightlog 2010-10-02

SA: Paul
SO: Siphelo
Others:

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Summary
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- Coudy during most of the evening. Cleared with some cloud around after 2, but
the humidity shot up dramatically. That means no data for tonight.

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Nightlog 2010-09-30

SA: Paul
SO: Siphelo
Others: Darragh, Francois, Hitesh, Janus, Ockert

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Summary
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- First half of the night Darragh, Hitesh and Francois took some images of the
primary mirror with the pin-hole camera on SPIFFY. That was interesting. Since
there are not a lot of star fields around after that we had to wait for the
LMC.

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