Night Log 2011-06-29

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others: David G, Keith S

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Summary
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- Bad weather, no observations tonight. High winds and humidity kept us closed
- Did some off-sky tests.

Night Log 2011-06-28

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Paul K, Keith S, David Gilbank. Amanda, Keith, Hannah at the beginning of the night.

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Summary
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* High humidity all night - did not open

* Overhead tests on RSS.

* TCS tracking tests.

Night Log 2011-06-27

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Keith S, with two visits by Keith B and a fleeting one by Chris.

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Summary
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* Beautiful night, photometric with stable conditions.

* Fold mirror repeatability tests - fold mirror made us very inefficient, but we could work with it.

* Science data for
2010-1-RSA_OTH-001
2010-1-UKSC-002 (wrong setting)
2011-2-UNC_RSA-001 (mysteriously vanishing target)
2010-1-RSA-009
2010-1-RS_UKSC_GU-001
2010-1-POL-005
2010-1-RSA_OTH_IUCAA-001
2010-1-UKSC-005

Night Log 2011-06-26

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Keith S, with visits from Martin, Keith B and Johan. Amanda in the morning, coming early to work! :o

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Summary
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* Variety of weather tonight - high humidity, beautifully clear with 0.6" seeing, cloudy with random seeing...

* Quite a few technical problems with various subsystems: payload, SALTICAM, Structure and Dome and the mirror alignment system

* Post-ADC out-of-focus images during track.

* Post-ADC open-loop tracking tests in four cardinal directions.

Night Log 2011-06-25

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Steve C, Keith Smith

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Summary
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* Ridge cloud all night - did not open.

* Biases from SALTICAM and RSS.

Night Log 2011-06-24

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Keith, Steve C

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Summary
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* Another horrible weather night, with snow, high winds and fog.

* SALTICAM gain data

* RSS calsys flats for Eckert

* Some more RSS repeatability tests in cold weather.

Night Log 2011-06-23

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Keith, Steve C, Martin at the beginning.

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Summary
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* Snowy, cold, windy. Did not open.

* Autocollimator stray light test in RSS - high resolution setting with 4" slit, low resolution setting with 2" slit.

* Filter repeatability tests in cold temperatures both for SALTICAM and RSS.

Spectrum of a Active Brightest Cluster Galaxy

Our next guest post is from Dr. Ilani Loubser from North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa. If you are interested in collaborating on this work, please feel free to contact her at Ilani.Loubser@nwu.ac.za.


This low resolution (pg0900 grating) spectrum was extracted from one 900 sec (major axis) exposure of a z ~ 0.05 Brightest Cluster Galaxy. This spectrum shows the area to the left of the first chip gap - and nicely illustrates SALT's efficiency in the blue! The higher order Balmer lines, as well as the diffuse weak emission lines, can clearly be identified.



This spectrum was taken as part of a program to probe activity in the most massive of elliptical galaxies – Brightest Cluster Galaxies (PI Ilani Loubser). They are believed to be sites of very interesting evolutionary phenomena (e.g. dynamical friction, galactic cannibalism, cooling flows), and may well require there to have been a special process of formation. These galaxies are normally assumed to be red and dead. However, several examples of ongoing star formation in BCGs, in particular those hosted by cooling-flow clusters, have been reported. The origin of the gas fuelling this star formation is still a mystery, and the possible explanations include processes involving cooling flows or cold gas deposited during a merging event. These BCGs often host radio-loud AGN, and can also help us to understand the role of feedback and gas accretion in galaxy and cluster evolution.

These spectra will now be analysed by extracting the underlying stellar absorption components and measuring the weak emission lines from the hot, ionised gas. The emission lines can then be analysed to determine whether they originated from AGN/Liner activity or star formation, and will be correlated to the host cluster properties (e.g. cooling flows) determined from existing X-ray data. In combination with other multi-wavelength data, the origin of the gas fuelling the star formation can then be determined.

Night Log 2011-06-22

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Keith, Steve C.

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Summary
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* Cloudy, windy and ridge cloud later. Did not open.

* Relative throughput measurements for SALTICAM and RSS using the calibration system.

* Autocollimator stray-light tests with RSS.

* Gain calibration data.

Night Log 2011-06-21

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Encarni, Bruno, Steve C., Keith

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Summary
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- Remarkably stable night, one stack stayed fine all night.

- MOS tests and moving baffle tests in the beginning, science
programs later. Got some data for:

2011-2-UNC_RSA-001
2011-2-RSA_OTH-002
2010-1-POL-006
2010-1-UKSC-005

Happy Winter Solistice!

Zolisa, Petri, Encarni, Bruno, and Keith get ready for a loooooong night in Sutherland. The weather is clear, the humidity is low, and let's hope the observing is good!

Night Log 2011-06-20

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Steve, Bruno, Paul R., Jonathan, Charl, Chris

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Summary
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- Beautiful clear night. Some technical work in the evening, followed
by throughput and moving baffle tests, and then science,
though with frustrating results.

- Science data for programs 2011-2-RSA_POL-001. Attempted
several others but without success.

Night Log 2011-06-19

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Steve

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Summary
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- Night lost to humidity and clouds.

Night Log 2011-06-18

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Bruno; Phil, Anne, and friends visiting early evening.

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Summary
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- Clear night, but very windy making alignments next to impossible,
technical difficulties early morning.

- Progressed with MOS tests and got more throughput data.

- Science data for:
2010-1-RSA_OTH-002
2011-2-RSA_POL-001
2010-1-RSA_OTH_IUCAA (though this affected by tech.problems).

Youth Day Amateur Radio Outreach

The plan for Youth Day (16 June) was to set up a heap of amateur radio gear at the school in Sutherland & have kids from the town come along & try communicating with others around the world via ham radio.  

It was a Great idea, just a pity about the utterly miserable weather!  Torrential rain & howling wind, interspersed with sleet & profound atmospheric gloom...

None the less, the guys had set up an antenna next to the kiosk by the rugby field the day before & power was to be leeched from Vic's trusty Pajero.

Not everyone made it to the school before the crack of dawn & all involved questioned their sanity more than twice before a round of coffee became available.  But once all the toys were set up & the crackle of radios filled the icy cold air, it seemed we just might survive this insanity afterall.

Our "education station" had the call-sign ZS3OBS (for Observatory), but the subtle alusion to Old Brown Sherry was not lost...  Given the horrendous cold, the Oscar Bravo Sierra ended up being a great emotional comfort on the day!

Before anyone gets enraged by the idea of having alcohol on standby at an outreach event, let it be known that No One in their right mind was ever going to haul their children out on a public holiday in weather like that!  Only poor little Melissa & Charlize, whose dad happens to be one of the SALT radio nuts, got to experience the full force of our good intentions.

Around 10am we eventually accepted that no one was going to show up - a unanimous decision to relocate to Valhalla was followed by a hasty pack-up & an even hastier retreat to higher & warmer ground.

The ducks were left to enjoy themselves, paddling around on the flooded rugby field...

With a much better antenna & reduced hypothermia risk (thanks to the OBS finally being applied to the problem), things improved substantially & the girls enthusiastically chatted to a few people around the country.

Later in the day, an expedition into "the forest" to hunt for waterfalls & mushrooms confirmed that the morning's events had done these 2 no harm whatsoever :)

The drive back down to CT on Friday was Spectacular with raging torrents & huge waterfalls rushing down the Verlatekloof Pass!

Not a typical Karoo scene...

Our own mini Augrabies Falls!

Night Log 2011-06-17

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Bruno, Hey-amish (mis-spelled to protect his or her identity)

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Summary
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- No observations due to humidity, though sky was nice and clear.

- Spent time testing various things, e.g. slot-mode RSS.

Night Log 2011-06-16

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others:

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Summary
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- Night lost to rain and strong winds

Quick - he's getting away!!

The HRS has been delayed by 6 months, but it's still a good time to check that the Fibre Instrument Feed (FIF), the focal plane end of the instrument that will live up in the payload, fits in there as intended.  All the bits were sent up from CT & put together.

After all the changes that've been made to the payload, including the eventual integration of the ADC a few weeks ago (Yay!), it's not too surprising that various mods will need to be made to allow the FIF to go in properly.

Being up there in a relatively dark dome provided a great opportunity to test my new camera flash on the primary - It Works :D

Next up it was afternoon tea & time to bid farewell to Ken whose 3 month stay at SALT is over :(

What do you give a guy who has a spectrograph that can do just about anything?!  Well - a serious looking hat, of course!

So long Ken - you've done a great job & really earned your vacation!  Do come visit us again sometime :)

Night Log 2011-06-15

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others:

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Summary
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- Good bye Ken!

- Night lost to snow, sleet, rain, wind, etc.

RSS spectra & inaugurating Amanda's new place

Here you go Dave - at long last, a few RSS spectra for you to pore over!  The first 3 were all taken with the PG0900 grating.  Remember that the 2 square "absorption features" in all the spectra are actually due to the gaps between the 3 chips that make up the RSS detector.  

The first spectrum is that of a spectrophotometric standard star known as LTT7987, a DA white dwarf with a V magnitude of 12.2.  The spectrum's completely dominated by the broad Balmer lines of hydrogen.

Next up is another spectrophotometric standard - an A-type dwarf (main sequence star) according to the literature.  It too shows the Balmer series in absorption, but the lines are much sharper due to the vastly lower pressure in the atmosphere of a main sequence star.  In fact, as Darragh pointed out, it actually looks more like an F-type star as the Balmer lines are there, but not very strong.  Hmmm...

Here's a spectrum of an object with emission lines.  This is a Wolf-Rayet star with strong helium & nitrogen features & hence belonging to the WN subtype.  These are massive stars (10-25x the mass of the Sun) which evolve rapidly through this phase (in about half a million years) & so they appear to be rare.  Wolf-Rayets lose enormous amounts of material in the form of a powerful (~2000 km/s) stellar wind & act as indicators for massive star formation in other galaxies.

Finally, another object with huge emission lines - the recurrent nova T Pyx, which ever-so-kindly waited for SALT to be ready before undergoing its long-overdue outburst in April!  This really is the *perfect* object for commissioning our multi-purpose spectrograph :)  The spectrum below was obtained with the PG2300 grating, set so as to observe the H-alpha region where hydrogen traces the material ejected during the nova eruption.

On what turned out to be Ken's last night of on-sky observing before leaving Sutherland (the next night was wiped out by an impressive storm), he obtained some wonderful spectro-polarimetric data of T Pyx.  This mode results in pairs of polarised spectra as the PG0900 grating was used in conjunction with the beamsplitter.  Even cooler than That, is the cunning use of the grating about 3 degrees off-Littrow, in order to boost the UV performance down near the atmospheric limit!  This data is amongst the most exciting stuff obtained with RSS so far & will yield unique & intriguing science :)

As much fun as the subsequent attempt to get the RSS multi-object spectroscopy (MOS) mode to work (in spite of thick cloud) was, good things were happening down at House 13 where Amanda had assembled most of the Tech Ops hooligans & a spirited bunch of wannabes up from Cape Town.

Shatteringly, the mechanical bunch made short work of the Astro Ops & IT representatives - at one point even resorting to rather condescending behaviour...

Apparently all such hubris was forgiven though - as demonstrated here by Vic & Hamish getting comfortable with their special feelings for one other.  It's slightly unfortunate that the Tech Ops jackets make the team look like Trekkie convention delegates - best we give that a bit more thought next time!

Astronomers in South Africa find evidence for a strange new planetary system

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Artist impression

Drs. Stephen Potter and Encarni Romero-Colmenero from the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) and the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) and collaborators have found evidence for the existence of an extraordinary planetary system where two giant planets are orbiting a close pair of "suns".

If confirmed, this will be an example of a very strange planetary system, given the nature of the stellar pair. The two stars, referred to as a white dwarf and a red dwarf, are each smaller than our Sun and are so close that they take only a couple of hours to orbit each other. The pair of them would actually fit comfortably within our Sun! By chance, the system is oriented in such a way that the stars appear to eclipse each other once every orbit as viewed from Earth. Dr. Potter and his collaborators noticed that the eclipses were not occurring on time, but were sometimes too early or too late. This led them to hypothesize the presence of two giant planets whose gravitational effect would cause the stars' orbit to wobble and consequently slightly alter the measured time between eclipses. The astronomers were also able to infer that the masses of the two planets must be at least 6 and 8 times that of Jupiter and take 16 and 5 years respectively to orbit the two stars. The system is too far away from us to be imaged directly.

This binary star system (known as UZ For) would be an extremely inhospitable environment. Due to their close proximity, the gravity of the white dwarf is constantly "stealing" material from the surface of the red dwarf in a continuous stream. This stream crashes onto the white dwarf where it gets super-heated to millions of degrees and subsequently floods the entire planetary system with enormous amounts of deadly X-rays.

This discovery was made possible by new SAAO and SALT observations combined with archival data spanning 27 years, gathered from multiple observatories and satellites.

Read more: Possible detection of two giant extrasolar planets orbiting the eclipsing polar UZ Fornacis

Night Log 2011-06-14

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Anthony, Bruno, David, Ken, Paul

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Summary
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=> Polarimetric observations for TPyx tonight.

=> Some experiments with MOS

=> Heavy clouds came and stopped observations.

Night Log 2011-06-13

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Anthony, Ken, Paul

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Summary
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=> Clear sky, very nice weather.

=> Science data for different programs.
A lot of data for unpolarized standards.

=> Data for sunset skyflats were also taken.

=> Problems with alignment from the evening.

Night Log 2011-06-12

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Anthony, Ken, Paul

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Summary
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=> Clear sky, but unstable weather, because high humidity.

=> Some sceince data for
2010-1-RSA_OTH-001
2011-2-UW-008
2011-2-UW-009
2010-1-UC-001
2011-2-RSA-006

=> Data were taken for throughput tests in burst mode
2011-2-UW-004

Night Log 2011-06-11

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Anthomy, Ken, Paul

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Summary
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=> Bad weather. No observations tonight.

Night Log 2011-06-10

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Anthony, Ken, Paul

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Summary
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=> Bad weather. No observations tonight.

Night Log 2011-06-09

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Anthony, Ken, Paul

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Summary
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=> Bad weather with high humidity. No observations tonight.

Night Log 2011-06-08

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Paul, Ken, luis, Anthony

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Summary
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=> Bad weather with rain and fog. No observations.

Announcement of forthcoming call for SALT proposals for semester 2, 2011

While commissioning is still continuing with SALT and its first-light instruments, progress is good and we are confident that by the time the Semester 2 observations will begin that the major instrument modes for both RSS and SALTICAM will have been successfully commissioned and their performances will be well characterized. This is an ongoing process and as we obtain information on performance characteristics, these will be posted on the SALT website.


The following is a summary of the SALT Board decisions in regard to the forthcoming proposal call for 2011 Semester 2:

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1.    This proposal call is for both SALTICAM and RSS on a "best efforts" basis (i.e. no guarantees regarding performance or completion). Depending on the progress with commissioning, some instrument modes may not yet be fully characterized before the proposal submission deadline (15 July).

2.    Observing time for this call will be charged to all SALT partners, who will have observing allocations in proportion to their shareholding.

3.    We expect that RSS Long Slit spectroscopy (LS) to be fully commissioned by the time of the call (30 June) and significant progress to have been made on Fabry-Perot imaging spectroscopy (FP) and Multi Object Spectroscopy (MOS). However, some of the RSS instrument modes (nod & shuffle, polarimetry, high speed) will only be commissioned later and possibly extending into Semester 2.

4.    For SALTICAM proposals, we expect all instrument modes to be available, although probably not all will be fully characterized by the time of the call.

5.    SALTICAM science commissioning and verification is on-going. While there are some existing proposals selected for this purpose, we are happy to consider ad-hoc SALTICAM proposals at any time, if they exercise particular instrument capabilities not covered by existing accepted commissioning proposals. New commissioning proposals (which are not charged) should be focused on delivering a quick definitive result that aids the commissioning. All such observations will be expected to be completed before the beginning of Semester 2.
Please contact the Astronomy Operations Director, David Buckley, or the instrument PI, Darragh O'Donoghue, in this regard.

6.    The call for 2011 Semester 2 (1 Sep - 28 Feb) observing proposals opens on 30 JUNE 2011.

The Phase I proposal tool will then be available for PIs to complete and submit proposals. Note that the Phase I proposals will contain mainly information for the Time Assignment Committees (TACs) and no details on the instrument set up or observing details need to be completed at this time. The Phase I tool will allow users to enter the basic proposal information (e.g. names, affiliations, conditions, targets, instruments, time requested). In addition several text inputs are required, which includes:
a.    scientific rationale (<1000 words; optional for some TACs)
b.    immediate objectives (<250 words; mainly to assist the SALT Astronomer)
c.    technical justification (<500 words)

While the Phase I proposal tool will not be available for release until 30 June (following thorough testing), those interested in submitting a proposal can complete the text components (as PDFs) at any time and include them in the final submission later.

7.    The deadline for Phase I submission is 15 JULY 2011 (i.e. 2 weeks from the proposal call).

Following submission, the proposals will be forwarded to the respective partner TACs, together with summary and statistical information (e.g. total times requested, conditions requested, target distributions).

8.    The TACs will complete their assessments and assign time to the proposals by 7 AUGUST 2011.

This information is sent back to SALT Astronomy Operations and PIs will be informed of their time allocations.

9.    The Phase II proposal process begins following the TAC decisions. PIs will then use the Phase II proposal tool to define in detail the required instrument configurations, and observing details (observing blocks, etc), for their observations.

10.    The Phase II proposals should to be submitted by 31 AUGUST 2011 for observations to be scheduled for Semester 2 which begins in September.

11.    For this first ever semester of charged science time, it is requested that PIs consider keeping their proposals simple and less ambitious.

Night Log 2011-06-07

SA: Amanda
SO: Patrick
Others: Alexei, Paul, Luis, Ken, Anthony, Steve P., Garith

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Summary
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. Bad weather, with rain and heavy fog. We did not open.

Night Log 2011-06-06

SA: Amanda
SO: Siphelo
Others: Paul, Marissa, Steve P., Barry & John, Anthony, Ken, Hitesh

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Summary
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. Observed for a few hours, closed for a few hours due to high humidity/frost, observed for many more hours, then finally closed around 03:00.

. Goodbye to BVIT Barry & John. Thanks for the memories.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2008-2-RSA-003 (Buckley/BVIT; throughput tests w/ SCAM)
2011-2-UKSC_AMNH-001 (TPyx)
2088-2-RSA-003
2010-2-RSA_OTH-001
2011-2-UW-004

Night Log 2011-06-05

SA: Amanda
SO: Zolisa
Others: Paul, Steve P., Marissa, Barry & John, Ken , Hitesh

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Summary
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. Closed early due to high humidity/frost.

. Took data for the following programs:
2011-2-UW-002 (TPyx)
2008-2-POL-001

Identifying Supernovae with SALT

One advantage of SALT's queue-based scheduling is its flexibility in allowing Time-of-Opportunity (ToO) observations. Our ability to quickly follow up on and then monitor T Pyx has been a great example of this. This was a rather special case, however, because it was a very special event that occurred at the very beginning of our re-commissioning period. We would like to make handling ToO observations as routine and responsive as possible. Toward that end we have a couple of commissioning proposals from within the SALT partnership to do rapid spectroscopic follow-up of supernovae. The first fruits of these has come in the form of a successful ID of the supernova PSN J18435900-6159460 by D. Milisavljevic and R. Fesen (Dartmouth) which has been announced at http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=3404. Here is a plot of the SALT spectrum with an overlay of the model used to make the identification as a Type Ia.

Night Log 2011-06-04

SA: Amanda
SO: Siphelo
Others: Marissa,Steve P., Barry & John, Amanda#2

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Summary
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. Clear night, but the second half was lost due to high humidity.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2011-2-UW-002 (TPyx, NaD spec.)
2008-3-RSA-001 (BVIT, RXTE overlap)

Night Log 2011-06-03

SA: Amanda
SO: Siphelo
Others: Steve P., Marissa, Barry & John

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Summary
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Due to technical problems, the night log from last night was not recorded.

Night Log 2011-06-02

SA: Amanda
SO: Siphelo
Others: Nic, Marissa, Steve P., Barry, & John, Hitesh, Patrick

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Summary
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. Beautiful, clear night. Had some techincal issues; however, we observed the full night.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2010-1-RSA_UKSC-001
2010-1-RSA_OTH-001
2011-2-UKSC_RU-001
2008-2-RSA-003 (BVIT; 1 calib., 2 targets)
ENG_ADC
2010-1-DC-002 (ToO)

Night Log 2011-06-01

SA: Amanda
SO: Patrick
Others: Nicola, Tim, Marissa, Siphelo. Steve P., Barry, John

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Summary
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Mostly clear night, with cirrus at beginning. Observed all night. Welcome to members from the BVIT team -- BVIT is back up and running!

Data taken for the following programs:
2010-1-RSA_UKSC-001
2011- 2-UW-002 (UV spectropolarimetry of T Pyx)
2008-2-RSA-003 (BVIT; 3 targets)
2010-1-RSA_OTH_002
2008-1-RSA-003 (Potter/BVIT)
2010-1-RSA_OTH-001
2010-1-RSA_UKLSC-001 (spec.phot. std. only)
2011-2-RU-006 (partial filter cycle)