Sunday, July 31, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-30

SA: Amanda
SO: Zolisa
Others: Steve P., Hitesh

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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

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-29

SA: Amanda
SO: Zolisa
Others: Steve P.

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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

Friday, July 29, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-28

SA: Amanda
SO: Zolisa
Others: Steve P.

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Summary
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. No on sky observations tonight due to snow.

. Data taken for ENG_RSS

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-27

SA: Amanda
SO: Zolisa
Others: Steve P., Keith

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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

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-26

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Amanda, Anthony, Steve P., Ted, Tim

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Summary
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=> Night lost because bad weather.

=> Fabry-Perot calibrations

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-25

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Ted, Tim

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Summary
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=> Fabry-Perot calibrations

=> Heavy clouds, little snow and strong wind

Monday, July 25, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-24

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Anthony, Ted, Tim

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Summary
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=> Fabry-Perot calibrations

=> Heavy clouds and rain

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-23

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Anthony, Tim, Ted

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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

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-22

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Ted, Tim

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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

Friday, July 22, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-21

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Steve C, Ted, Tim

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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.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-20

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Anthony, David, Steve C, Ted, Tim

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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.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-19

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Ted, Nic, Steve C, Tim, Alexei. Ant and Martin at the beginning of the night. Amanda for a brief surprise visit in a most interesting attire.

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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.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-18

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Ted, Nic, Steve C. Ant at the beginning of the night.

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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.

Fabry-Perot DUAL etalon mode is tested

17th July 2011: A milestone was reached tonight.... we achieved dual etalon mode calibration ring images with RSS! Getting the rings from two separate etalons aligned and accurately tracking each other with wavelength has been a long time coming. The etalon system was designed by the Fabry-Perot guru Ted Williams from Rutgers University ten years ago,  and the final system is still undergoing commissioning.

To accomplish the image shown below we (Ted Williams, SALT engineer Peter Menzies and SALT Astronomer Nic Loaring) have taken hundreds of calibration images, conducted numerous mechanical shimming exercises and generally pulled our hair out over the past two years at the telescope!

The image below shows a calibration ring of the Ne 653.2 nm emission line taken in the 653 nm narrow band filter with both the low resolution ("small gap") and medium resolution ("medium gap") etalons inserted. This combination of etalons will be used for Fabry-Perot observations at medium resolutions.

RSS Fabry-Perot image showing a Ne 6532 calibration ring taken in dual etalon mode.
And if that doesn't impress you.. check out the smile below!

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).

Monday, July 18, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-17

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Nic, Ted, Steve C. Ant briefly at the beginning.

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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).

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-16

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Nic, Ted. Ant and Johan at the beginning of the night.

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Summary
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* Cirrussy, stable night.

* Interferometer unavailable (cannot focus telescope), so Fabry-Perot calibration runs all night.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-15

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Nicola, Ted

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Summary
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* Spent the night doing FP calibration work

Great Stuff :)

BIG Thanks & Well Done to everyone, especially Christian, Steve C & all the SAs, involved in making this first round of "serious" observing proposals such a success!  The various tools, websites & processes all worked brilliantly as far as I could tell :)  The only painful part was dealing with the fact that I'd left everything to the last minute - but presumably that's why PIPT stands for PI *Proposal* Tool rather than PI *Planning* Tool?!  Perhaps some additional functionality could be incorporated to address this pathological deficiency next time...

Friday, July 15, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-14

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Nic, Ted. Anthony, Janus, Ockert, Keith at the beginning

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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! :)

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-13

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Nicola, Ted. Ockert, Anthony, Janus at the beginning of the night.

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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

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-12

SA: Tim
SO: Zolisa
Others: Brent M, ERC, NSL. Keith solving problems.

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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.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

How Many Proposals?

Curious about how many SALT proposal there will be? Well you can follow along here to see how many proposal we have received! It will be updated once an hour up until the proposal deadline. Any guesses for what the final value will be?

Night Log 2011-07-11

SA: Tim
SO: Zolisa
Others: Brent M, Keith

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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.

You've got questions...

And we have answers. If you don't see your question on our Phase I FAQ page, then please send an email to salthelp@salt.ac.za. Or if you are having any problems with the PIPT, please send an email to salthelp@salt.ac.za. Good luck with your proposals!

Monday, July 11, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-10

SA: Tim
SO: Zolisa
Others: Brent M, Keith, Eben

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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.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-09

SA: Tim
SO: Zolisa
Others: Keith, Brent M

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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!

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-08

SA: Tim
SO: Zolisa
Others: Brent M

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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.

Friday, July 8, 2011

The real story behind the demise of the coffee machine at SALT

The windswept landscape of the Karoo hides many secrets. There are some who speak of these secrets in whispered tones in the dead dark of a Sutherland night under the protection of ridge cloud. There are many murmurs, they say, amongst the Kloofs of old. Long ago they were inhabited by all manner of folk who lived in fear of an enchanter (there are some who call him 'Tim'), well versed in the art of pyrokinesis, who travelled from Kloof to Kloof with relative ease. These folk were dependent on the life-sustaining liquid Coffea arabica, the ambrosia of the gods. Some say their sustenance used to plunge from the sky in a clear bottle, but in more recent times such liquor of life has been dispensed regularly from a machine, shiny and sturdy. Its halted machinations understandably leave a cloud heavier than ridge cloud over all the land. Long has the culprit been suspected but never were they caught in the act. At long last here is photographic evidence of the plunderous pyrokinesis unleashed upon the machine of mojo, the liquefactor of loveliness and the giver of goodness. May it RIP (rest in pieces).

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...

First Proposal!

Congratulations to Matthew Schurch and collaborators for getting in the first SALT proposal for the coming semester. Allocated lucky PROPID of 2011-3-RSA_UKSC-001, they are in a week before the proposal call! Just remember, proposals are due next Friday, 15 July at Midnight!

Night Log 2011-07-07

SA: Tim
SO: Zolisa
Others: Brent M, Keith

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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.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-06

SA: Tim
SO: Zolisa
Others: Brent M, Hitesh, Francois, Keith B

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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.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-05

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others: David G, Amanda, Martin, Tim, Brent

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Summary
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- Night lost to high humidity

- Did engineering tests.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-04

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others: David G., Dave Carter.

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Summary
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- Bad weather, did not open tonight.
- Did some engineering observations.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-03

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others:

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Summary
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- Night lost to bad weather. Could not go up to the telescope
due to heavy snow.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-02

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others: David G

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Summary
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- Night lost to bad weather. Rain and little bit of snow

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Night Log 2011-07-01

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others: David G

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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.

Friday, July 1, 2011

SALT Proposal Call

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to inform you that we are now accepting SALT proposals for the period 1 Sep 2011 to 28 Feb 2012 (2011 Semester 2). Please note that this proposal call is for both SALTICAM and RSS on a "best efforts" basis (i.e. no guarantees regarding performance or completion). Observing time for this call will be charged to all SALT partners, who will have observing allocations in proportion to their shareholding.

The proposal deadline for this period is 15 July, 2011 at Midnight SAST.

Please submit your proposal via the SALT Principal Investigator Proposal Tool (PIPT).  Instructions, software, and other information about proposing for SALT can be found on the SALT website.

Call for Proposals:
http://www.salt.ac.za/observing/current-call-for-proposals/

Instructions for Submitting your Proposal:
http://www.salt.ac.za/observing/proposing-for-salt-observations/phase-i-proposal-instructions/

Download the PIPT Software:
https://www.salt.ac.za/wm/

Sincerely,
The SALT Astronomy Operations Team

Night Log 2011-06-30

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others: Amanda, Hitesh, Ockert, Keith , David G.

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Summary
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- Night lost due to high humidity