Night Log 2011-09-29

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others:

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Summary
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- Very stable dark and good seeing night. Lots of science done
plus acquisition and guiding tests.

- Science data for:
2011-3-IUCAA-005
2011-3-UNC_RSA-001 (finished)
2011-3-UKSC-003
2011-3-UNC_RSA-002

Night Log 2011-09-28

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others:

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Summary
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- Battled with clouds all night, but got some science done as well as
on-sky MOS tests in between thicker patches. Also various calibration
sets done. Eventually stopped on-sky stuff around 3am.

- Got successful science for 2011-3-UNC_RSA-001 and 2011-2-RSA_OTH_UKSC-001
though attempted several others too.

Night Log 2011-09-27

SA: Amanda
SO: Siphelo
Others: Anthony, Chris, David, Petri, Zolisa, Jonathan, Rocco, & Peter

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Summary
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. Dark, clear night with moderate seeing and some techincal issues.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2010-1-RSA_POL_OTH-001
2011-2-RSA-007 (MOS testing)
2011-3-UKSC_POL_RSA-001
2011-2-UNC_RSA-001
2010-1-RSA_UKSC-003
2011-3-UKSC-003
2011-3-POL-005

Night Log 2011-09-26

SA: Amanda
SO: Siphelo
Others: Anthony, Buckley, Sarah W. (from Business Day), Liz B. (from IRSF)

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Summary
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. Dark night with lots of cirrus. Clouds started out light and got heavier throughout the night.

. Data taken tonight for the following programs:
2011-3-POL-005
2011-2-RSA_OTH_UKSC-001
2011-3-IUCAA-003
2011-3-RSA_UKSC-007

Night Log 2011-09-25

SA: Amanda
SO: Siphelo
Others: Anthony, Jonathan, Liz B. (from IRSF)

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Summary
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. Dark, warm (19 deg!) night with decent going to poor (1-2.5") seeing.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2010-2-RSA-001
2011-2-RSA_OTH_UKSC-001
2011-3-POL-005
2011-3-DC_RSA-001
2011-3-UKSC_POL_RSA-001
2011-3-RSA_UKSC-007

Night Log 2011-09-24

SA: Amanda
SO: Siphelo
Others: Anthony

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Summary
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. Dark night with some clouds and fair to poor seeing.

. Data taken for the following programs
2010-1-RSA-004 (arcs)
2011-3-RSA-004 (calibrations for last night)
2011-2-RSA_OTH_UKSC-001
2011-2-UNC_RSA-001
MOS tests (2011-2-RSA-014)
2011-3-GU-00
2011-3-UKSC-003
2011-3-RSA-002

Night Log 2011-09-23

SA: Amanda
SO: Siphelo
Others: Anthony

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Summary
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. Dark, clear night with fair to poor seeing. Closed an hour early due to high humidity. Had an interesting variety of technical issues, the details of which are noted in the log.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2011-3-RSA-004
2011-2-RSA_OTH_UKSC-001
2011-3-RSA-002
2011-3-POL-005
2010-1-RSA_OTH-012
ENG_SCAM

Night Log 2011-09-22

SA: Amanda
SO: Patrick
Others: Anthony, Wouter, Ockert

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Summary
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. Clear, mostly dark night with moderate seeing.

. Data taken for the following programs
2010-2-RSA-001
2011-3-POL-007
2011-3-UKSC_POL_RSA-001
2010-1-POL-002
2010-1-RSA_OTH-012
2011-3-RSA-004
MOS acquistion testing + 2010-1-RSA_RU-001

Night Log 2011-09-21

SA: Amanda
SO: Patrick
Others: Jonathan, Anthony

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Summary
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. Mostly clear night with moderate to poor seeing, some light clouds passing through.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2011-2-RSA_OTH_UKSC-001
2010-1-RSA_OTH-005
2010-2-RSA-001
2010-1-RSA_UKSC-003
2010-1-RSA_OTH-012
2011-3-POL-005
2010-1-RSA-003

Night Log 2011-09-20

SA: Tim
SO: Patrick
Others: Ockert, Wouter

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Summary
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weird night, weather-wise. awful seeing at the start with even the MASS reporting 3"-4" at times. closed for several hours in the middle of the night due to high humidity which slackened off just enough later on to allow us to work for the last few hours. acquired data for the following programs:

2010-1-RSA_OTH-013
2010-1-UNC-001
2011-3-POL-005
2011-3-UKSC-003

Night Log 2011-09-19

SA: Tim
SO: Siphelo
Others: ockert

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Summary
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clear, calm night with low humidity until the very end. mediocre seeing for most of the night, but subarcsecond for a while in the 2nd half. obtained data for the following programs:

2011-2-RU-006
2011-3-DC_RSA-001
2011-3-POL-005
2011-3-RSA_UKSC-004
2011-3-UW-003
2010-1-RSA_OTH_IUCAA-001

Night Log 2011-09-18

SA: Tim
SO: Siphelo
Others:

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Summary
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entire night lost to bad weather. 80+ kph winds to start followed after sunset by clouds, fog, and rain until midnight. conditions improved afrer midnight, but it never cleared enough to observe.

Night Log 2011-09-16

SA: Tim
SO: Siphelo
Others:

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Summary
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warm, dry night with come and go cirrus and good seeing at the start. in spite of the clouds, moon, and some payload issues managed to get data for the following programs:

2011-2-UNC_RSA-001
2011-3-UKSC_POL_RSA-001
2011-3-RSA_UKSC-007
2011-3-RSA_UKSC-004
2011-3-POL-005

Night Log 2011-09-15

SA: Tim
SO: Siphelo
Others:

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Summary
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beautiful photometric night with steady 0.7"-1.2" seeing. fairly smooth operations for the most part. some RSS issues early on and a couple of payload failures, but they were all fairly quickly recovered from.

- no nightlog for 20110914 since everything was shut down in preparation for the UPS replacement. spent first half of night working on improving pointing model for the mass-dimm. high winds in the 2nd half forced early closure of that.

- UPS replacement successful.

- replaced BVRI with g', r', i', and z' in SALTICAM.

- removed P000160N13 and P000160N15 from RSS and replaced with P000277N06 and P000277N08 for Barger et al.

- got data for the following programs: 2011-3-UKSC_POL_RSA-001, 2010-1-RSA_UKSC_GU-001, and 2011-3-POL-005. got engineering data in the form of biases for both SALTICAM and PDET as well as some data to measure ADC performance as a function of elevation and prism separation.

Night Log 2011-09-13

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Janus, Tim. Siphelo, Sudhanshu, and Rajin visit

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Summary
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- First part of the night closed due to humidity, Janus continued
tinkering with probe mapping models; some RSS functional tests at
the same time.

- Suddenly dried up totally before 2am, so continued on-sky
probe tests until dawn.

Night Log 2011-09-12

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Janus, Patricia, Chris, Albert van Jaarsveld, Nithaya Chetty, Neville Legg

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Summary
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- First half of night continuing guide probes mapping and tweaking by Janus.
Second half lost to humidity.

Night Log 2011-09-11

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Charl, visit by Sudhanshu, Rajin, Hannes

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Summary
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- Cirrusy night with full moon, and full of projects with bright stars, mostly,
in many different modes. Data for seven proposals.

- Power-outage and running on generator slowed efficiency in the later half.

Night Log 2011-09-10

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Sudhanshu and Zolile visit

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Summary
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- Mostly cloudy night, though got couple of targets in the beginning.
Spectral flats for numerous settings afterwards.

- Good luck Springboks in the morning :)

Night Log 2011-09-09

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: visit from Charl and Jonathan early night

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Summary
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- A nice clear productive night. Many science programs done, both high-speed
and normal long-slit. High winds prevented good alignment though.

Night Log 2011-09-08

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Paul, Darragh, Lisa

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Summary
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- Could not open due to humidity and clouds.

- Spent night doing Salticam flat field tests and some autocollimator
stray-light investigation.

Night Log 2011-09-07

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Paul, Darragh, Lisa, Charl

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Summary
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- Continued with RSS and Salticam high-speed commissioning
and observations

- A great stable night

Night Log 2011-09-06

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others: Darragh, Lisa, Petri

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Summary
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- First ever simultaneous Salticam and RSS observations done tonight. RSS slot mode spectroscopy of AE Aqr through the pellicle and frame transfer mode observations on Salticam.

- Very good observing conditions tonight.

- Further commissioning of Salticam and RSS frame transfer and slot modes.

- Data obtained for:
2011-2-RSA-001
2011-2-RSA-009

Night Log 2011-09-05

SA: Nic
SO: Patrick
Others: Darragh, Paul, Jack

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Summary
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Clear and very warm, dry night.
Test images to check the alignment of the slot area on the RSS CCD and slotmode slitlet.
High speed RSS spectroscopy.
Salticam commissioning, blank field (flat field tests) and cluster (photometry) observations.

Night Log 2011-09-04

SA: Nic
SO: Patrick
Others: Darragh, Eben for a while helping with slitmask issues, Jack refusing to sleep

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Summary
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Clear stable conditions.
High speed RSS spectroscopy commissioning.
SALTICAM photometry testing.
Autocollimator straylight test spectrum.

Night Log 2011-09-03

SA: Lisa
SO: Patrick
Others: Darragh, Nic, Jack, Francois

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Summary
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Great clear night spent commissioning RSS slotmode (high-speed spectroscopy) - good progress was made!

Commissioning SALT's high-speed modes, + a wedding!

Darragh's taken over from Eric & the goal now is to commission the various high-speed modes for RSS & SALTICAM.  Both instruments have frame transfer masks which can either be used to blank off half of the detector (so that the exposed half can quickly be shifted into the hidden section & then read out without delaying the next exposure), or an even smaller area can be exposed using slot mode, allowing even faster sampling (up to 10 frames per second).

This slit-viewer image on the SALTICAM display shows the specially modified longslit that's been masked off (with pieces of black tape) for the purpose of slotmode spectroscopy.  The target star is just visible near the bottom end of the slitlet.

This image shows a RSS detector image of the star on the slitlet, as seen through the slot in the frame transfer mask.

Inserting a grating into the beam produces a spectrum, seen here in the centre of the slot.

Nic's had to enlisted the help of a mini-SA in the form of Jack in order to cope with all this excitement!

Here he is running off with the MOS hat...

Jack finally went to sleep in the kitchen & we couldn't afford to risk waking him so here's Chef Darragh preparing our gourmet night lunches in the control room!

On a totally different note - the blog's long overdue for some photos from Ockert & Elsabe's thoroughly brilliant wedding that took place in Tulbagh on 27 August.  

Several members of the SALT team attended, having cleaned up rather well for the big occasion!

Within seconds of the bottles of bubbly being placed on the table, Eben set about scoring the neck of one of them with a knife, in preparation for an extremely impressive demonstration of "champagne flute sabrage"...

The party finished more than 12 hours after it started - a truly memorable day & a great start to their married life!

In other news from the top of the hill...

In addition to the ongoing RSS commissioning work, another major development up at SALT is the conclusion that the new inductive edge sensors from Fogale meet spec & would thus be suitable replacements for the existing capacitive edge sensor system.  Buttons for attaching sensors have now been glued on to two of the segments.  Below we see the delicate process of flipping one of those 100 kg segments over.

Another milestone was the removal of the much loved/hated tracker access platform.  The Tech Ops team was sad to see it go, but Astro Ops has long resented how much of the primary mirror it obscures.  It's now been replaced by a draw-bridge style platform which ought to keep everyone happy (except maybe Amanda, who's yet to make peace with its ergonomic limitations) since it provides access to the tracker when needed, but folds out of the way the rest of the time.

Over on the Far Side of the plateau, two nifty new domes have mushroomed up!  These will house a pair of 0.5-m robotic telescopes from Poland.

These are part of the Solaris project which will consist of four such telescopes, two in SA, one in Australia & one in Argentina.

Having passed its waterproof test, the dome was opened slightly to give us a better look at the hardware.

The team will return in October to install the second telescope & continue the commissioning process.

All the while, the tourists just keep pouring in up here - keeping Dave & co out of trouble :)

On the wildlife front - the hostel staff bravely trapped a huge "Koringkriek" (aka Wheat Cricket or Armoured Ground Cricket), affording us a great photo-op & a chance to stretch our tolerance for hideous creepy crawly creatures...

At first our sci-fi horror movie star was reluctant to venture out of the glass jar, but eventually it did do some tentative exploring - all the while being subjected to multiple camera flashes.  Criiiinge...

Cheerio Phil and Anne photo

Night Log 2011-09-01

SA: Lisa
SO: Patrick
Others: Eric, Anthony, Darragh, Nic, also Keith & Chris for a while

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Summary
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High winds prevented us opening & the weather just deteriorated through the night, but did plenty of MOS commissioning & calibration work, + RSS frame transfer & slotmode tests.

Too bad about the weather as it was Eric's last night. After all his hard work, he thoroughly deserved to walk away with a pile of zippy data... Oh well, you'll just have to come back Hooper - & make sure you fit that SA holiday into your schedule next time! Travel safely & we hope to see you back here soon :)

Multi Object Spectroscopy (MOS) Commissioning

Eric Hooper's been back from Wisconsin, working with the gang to get another RSS mode - Multi Object Spectroscopy (MOS) - commissioned during the past couple of weeks.

Here's what you see when you insert one of the laser-cut carbon fibre MOS slitmasks into the beam - all the individual slitlets & the pinholes for the reference stars appear to "light up".

The next image shows a MOS arc spectrum - each horizontal row is from a particular slitlet.

& here's a shot of the slitmask magazine - the masks on the left are the ordinary longslits & those on the right are the custom-made MOS masks.

This is one of the fancier masks that Eric tried out.  It has some very small (short) slits to allow more sky measurements to be made closer to the target galaxy.

Intrepid Dr Hooper taking MOS flat fields at 4am!

Now in a slightly more flamboyant, telemarketer mode - offering us one of the RSS longslits... :)

Lastly - here's a regular longslit spectrum.  In fact there happened to be 3 bright stars on the slit in this exposure, one of which is the X-ray transient MAXI J1836-194 that's in outburst at the moment...

Night Log 2011-08-31

SA: Lisa
SO: Patrick
Others: Anthony, Darragh, Eric, Francois, Hitesh, Nic, Jack

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Summary
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Sutherland bade Phil & Anne farewell today - in *fine* style we might add... Good luck to SAAO Cape Town as they attempt to top that tomorrow! A blog post featuring the day's action will follow soon ;)

Exciting target-of-opportunity longslit spectroscopy of an unusual X-ray transient in outburst, the Universe & SALT's way of saying "so long & thanks" to Phil

Successful first light for "Massively Disappointing Spectroscopy" mode 8)