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Summary
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. Clear, dark night with fair to poor seeing.
. Data taken for the following programs:
2010-1-UNC-002
2010-1-RSA_OTH_IUCAA-001
2010-1-RSA_OTH-013
2011-2-RSA_OTH-002
2011-2-RSA-006
2010-1-RSA_OTH-012
ENG_RSS
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Summary
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. Clear, dark, mostly photometric night with good seeing.
. Data taken for programs:
2011-2-RSA_IUCAA-001
2010-1-RSA_OTH-013
2010-1-DC-002
2010-1-RSA_OTH_013
ENG_RSS (circular polarimetry testing!)
2011-2-RSA_OTH-002
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Summary
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. No on sky observations tonight due to snow.
. Data taken for ENG_RSS
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Summary
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. Clouds at sunset, and we were able to observe through them until after midnight. Clouds and an RSS issue prevented observations in the morning.
. Data taken for the following programs:
2010-1-RSA_OTH-001
2011-2-RSA_OTH-002
2010-1-UKSC-004
ENG_RSS
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Summary
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=> Night lost because bad weather.
=> Fabry-Perot calibrations
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Summary
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=> Fabry-Perot calibrations
=> Heavy clouds, little snow and strong wind
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Summary
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=> Fabry-Perot calibrations
=> Heavy clouds and rain
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Summary
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=> Some clouds during the day and heavy clouds during the night.
The end of two weeks of observational weather.
=> Fabry-Perot calibrations all the night
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Summary
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=> Clear night.
=> Fabry-Perot calibrations for HR and LR most of the night
=> Some science observations at the very end. Unfortunately,
fold mirror and payload problems create a lot of restrictions
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Summary
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=> Clear sky. Nice weather
=> Most of the time the night was used for Fabry-Perot calibrations
=> Some time was used for science observations.
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Summary
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interrupted our regularly scheduled fabry-perot calibrations to chase up on a high magnfication microlensing event on both its rising and setting tracks plus got one block in twilight for kniazev. plagued by guider and payload issues for both attempts at the microlens, unfortunately. got some data, but not as efficiently as we would have hoped. the weather, however, was good all night, yet again.
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Summary
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** Clear night.
** FP Calibrations all night, except for one brief sky exposure perfectly timed to coincide with a short-lived high-humidity climb that forced us to close. Humidity, of course, went back down afterwards.
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Summary
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* Cloudy at the beginning of the night but cleared later on.
* Fabry-Perot calibrations all night.
 |
| RSS Fabry-Perot image showing a Ne 6532 calibration ring taken in dual etalon mode. |
 |
| Fabry-Perot mode RSS instrument team specialist Ted Williams - you'd never guess that he was pretty chuffed! (SALT Astronomer Encarni Romero-Colmenero is in the background). |
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Summary
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*Cirrus at the beginning of the night, which cleared fairly early on.
*WORLD PREMIERE!!! First dual mode MR successful overlap! Not quite ready for science observations yet, but a major step nevertheless!! :)
* Tracking and guiding night sky flats (blank fields).
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Summary
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* Cirrussy, stable night.
* Interferometer unavailable (cannot focus telescope), so Fabry-Perot calibration runs all night.
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Summary
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* Spent the night doing FP calibration work
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Summary
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* Cloudy night that probably turned photometric half way through
* Took science data for 2011-2-RSA_OTH-002
* FP commissioning science data for
2010-1-RSA_OTH-014
2010-1-RSA-013
* Tested guide probe focus - Improved focus speed and reliability enormously!!! This *will* reduce acquisition time *significantly*! Whooo hooo! :)
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Summary
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Clear, photometric, busy night.
Mapped Salticam/RSS so that acquisition can happen via the pellicle
Calibration runs for Fabry-Perot:
Calibration and parallelism runs for the low-resolution and medium resolution etalons at Halpha
standard for Kniazev 2010-1-RSA-007
Data for 2010-1-UKSC-004
Commissioning FP LR observations for 2010-1-RSA_OTH-014
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Summary
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clear, calm, cool, photometric night with fair to good seeing. various gremlins in the first half, but fairly smooth, routine 2nd half. did some of the throughput tests as recommended by Darragh to directly compare SCAM and RSS. also got some SCAM GC data for Darragh. did several observations in the 2nd half for eckert and averaged 15 minutes overhead for each observation with 15 min of integration time on source. had no further problems with fold mirror or guider during that time. ended the night by getting spectra of a supernova in the galaxy ESO 147-5.
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Summary
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struggled against cirrus all night, but got some work done. the big achievement was getting a real MOS alignment done and then successfully taking data with that alignment for almost 2 hours. the data looks ok to my eye, but it would be good for other to go through it as well. now that the procedure is known and tested, the extra setup required for MOS shouldn't require too much extra time. it would be even quicker if there were macros to set RSS up for the MOS imaging.
after doing the MOS work we got data for albrow (NGC 5927 and 47 Tuc), Barway (NGC 7252), and block 6040 for eckert. also got some more calibration arcs and flats.
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Summary
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another clear, dry night with mediocre to poor seeing. made some more progress on learning how to do MOS alignment. got arcs, flats, and specphot calibrations for configurations used thus far. got a bit of science data for kniazev and albrow. attemped more for miszalski and fesen, but conditions and lack of guiding kept us from getting anything useful.
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Summary
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a productive, if not entirely smooth, night with good weather, but mediocre seeing. achieved a MOS alignment and acquired MOS spectra which is a milestone. the process needs much refinement, but it's definitely doable now.
acquired the following science data:
NGC 6835 for Tekola (2011-2-RSA_OTH-002)
IGR J15529-5029 for McBride (2010-1-UKSC_OTH-001)
J161132-512906 for Kniazev (2010-1-RSA_OTH-001)
ALS 3713 for Ulusoy (2011-2-RSA_POL-001)
PN G006.0+05.6 for Szczerba (2010-1-POL-006)
BPS CS 22938-0044 for Jeffery (2010-1-RSA_UKSC_GU-001)
PSN 2011 07 09.131 for Fesen (2010-1-DC-002)
the last observation was of a supernova in NGC 782 that was discovered yesterday by South Africa's famous amateur supernova and GRB hunter, Berto Monard!
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Summary
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large, fast humidity jump during dinner slowed us a little bit at the beginning, but then worked through the rest of the night. performed the following tasks:
* acquired another round of burst mirror throughput data for each of the narrowband filters currently installed in RSS.
* performed fold mirror repeatability tests for rho's ranging from 0 to -120.
* attempted MOS acquistion with recently cut masks for Hilton's program.
* got data on NGC 253 for Tekola
* got data on J2121-0101 for Koziel-Wierzbowska.
* attempted Eckert block 6040, but guider problems prevented us from doing it. object at least was easily visiible in 1 sec acquisition image.
Some say there is a Karoo creature lying in wait deep within its lair that is even more dangerous than the enchanter! So foul, so cruel, that no man yet has fought with it and lived! To be continued...
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Summary
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slowed down for a few hours by humidity, but otherwise productive. clear, photometric night with mediocre to poor seeing. completed some RSS thruput tests using narrowband filters, got science data for Tekola (2011-2-RSA_OTH-002), and got twilight flats for salticam. made some progress on MOS acquisition, but was slowed down by the fold mirror acting up. worst of all, the SALT espresso machine died once again.
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Summary
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lost a few hours to humidity in the first half, but had decent weather for the entire 2nd half. hitech tuned the interferometer and it's working better than before for the most part. had issues with it not locking at times, but they seemed to correlate when it was passing over gaps and i kept putting it in the same place with my az/el commands.
only got half the pointing data i wanted. slowed down considerably by problems with the moving baffle.
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Summary
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- Night lost to high humidity
- Did engineering tests.
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- Bad weather, did not open tonight.
- Did some engineering observations.
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- Night lost to bad weather. Could not go up to the telescope
due to heavy snow.
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Summary
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- Night lost to bad weather. Rain and little bit of snow
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Summary
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- We did not have the interferometer working for tonight which meant we could not do any science observations.
- We completed some on-sky engineering tests.
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Summary
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- Night lost due to high humidity
