Night Log 2011-10-30

SA: Tim
SO: Siphelo
Others:

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Summary
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clouds came over at the end of twilight and then high humidity shut us down for good at 21:30.

used the closed-dome time to determine simpler guidelines for doing QTH flats. it turns out to be very straightforward:

- for the PG0300, PG0900, PG1300, and PG1800 gratings the QTH2 lamp (the one on the right on SOMMI) with the clear-uv filter works best at all wavelengths. with the 1.5" slit and 2x2 binning there were enough counts with 1 second exposures in all cases except the blue-most settings in PG1800 where 3-5 seconds would be better. other slits scale accordingly.

- for PG2300 the clear-uv filter with both QTH lamps turned on works the best. 1 sec sufficient with 1.5". 3-5 seconds probably better in the blue.

- for PG3000 it appears that QTH1+QTH2 plus the red-clear filter works best in the blue (station <=110) as well as the red (station >120). best exposure is 5 seconds with 1.5" slit. in between QTH1 with clear-blocked works the best with 3 second exposures. there is some kind of emission line or ghosting that goes away when QTH2 is turned off (see P72-74). need to look into that more closely.

Night Log 2011-10-29

SA: Tim
SO: Siphelo
Others: amanda & friends

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Summary
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attempted a whole night fabry-perot-a-palooza, but were slowed down by high humidity and rapidly changing temperatures which made alignment and IQ maintenance a chore. got some good practice carrying out fabry-perot observations in spite of the IQ problems and the data for 2011-3-RSA_OTH-004 at the end looks decent.

Night Log 2011-10-28

SA: Tim
SO: Siphelo
Others: keith

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Summary
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thick cirrus and problem with calibration system (no hardware is safe with me on duty) slowed us down for the first couple hours, but then it cleared up. good to moderate seeing all night and photometric by the end. got some good looking data for the following programs:

2011-3-RU-008
2011-3-RU-013
2011-3-RSA_OTH-009
2011-3-UW-007
2011-3-POL-006

and then at the end of the night my hardware curse took out the mice for both SCAM and PCON. VNC to the rescue, though, and i was able to continue with no problem.

Night Log 2011-10-27

SA: Tim
SO: Siphelo
Others: eben, keith

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Summary
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a herculean effort by the daycrew got the slitmask ready for use, but alas it failed again in a different way early on. manually installed the imaging mask again and did fabry-perot science the rest of the night. the fabry-perot system worked well and the seeing was decent for most of the time. acquired data for the following programs:

2011-3-RU-013 (eriksen)
2011-3-RU-008 (hovey)

Night Log 2011-10-26

SA: Tim
SO: Siphelo
Others: amanda, eben

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Summary
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lost 2nd half of the night to high humidity. got some engineering data for guiding with SALTICAM via fold mirror and pellicle. did closed-dome engineering tests with RSS in fabry-perot mode.

Night Log 2011-10-25

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Tim, Martin

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Summary
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- Most of the night lost to humidity, but got couple of
sets of useful MOS tests done before closing.

Night Log 2011-10-24

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others:

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Summary
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- Dark photometric night with good seeing, and humidity just
below the closing limit. Stuck with one long-slit only.
Science data for:

2011-3-DC_RSA-001
2011-3-IUCAA-004
2011-3-IUCAA-001
2011-3-RSA_OTH-003
2011-3-RU-001

Many of these are probing the faint limits of RSS with various
gratings, hoping to get feedback from the PIs.

Night Log 2011-10-23

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Charl

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Summary
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- Beautiful night, though wind high again. Slitmask magazine
still out of action, salticam filter trouble, but got several
on-sky commissioning tests and Salticam science progs done.
Science data for:

2010-1-RSA_OTH-014
2011-3-UW_OTH-002
2010-1-RSA_OTH_IUCAA-001
2011-3-AMNH-003
2011-3-GU-001

Night Log 2011-10-22

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Vic and Charl

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Summary
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- High winds prevented alignment, tech.difficulties would have
prevented spectroscopy anyway, but took good series of
burst mode throughput data in photometric conditions.

Night Log 2011-10-21

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others:

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Summary
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- Clouded out totally. Spent night doing various off-sky tests.

Night Log 2011-10-20

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Darragh

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Summary
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- Frustrating night with thick clouds coming and going. Lost much of the night.
High-speed commissioning targets in between, as well as a bit of other science.

- Data for:
2011-2-RSA-009
2011-3-RSA_OTH-026
2010-1-UKSC-005

Night Log 2011-10-19

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Darragh

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Summary
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- Night lost to humidity. Commissioning with slit-slots and MOS using
the cal.screen.

Night Log 2011-10-18

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

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Summary
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- night lost bad weather. high winds and rain.

Night Log 2011-10-17

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others:

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Summary
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- started with MOS commissioning tests but were cut short by clouds that moved in from the west.
- no science observations for the night.

Night Log 2011-10-16

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others:

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Summary
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- Weather was clear for most of the night, but the seeing was not good.
- Got data for field vignetting as requested by Darragh.
- Futher MOS commissioning tests were cut short by technical problems.
- Closed due to high humidity around midnight.

Night Log 2011-10-15

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others:

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Summary
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- continued with MOS commissioning tests, in particular guidance on SALTICAM using the pellicle. Observations were cut short by high humidity around midnight.

Night Log 2011-10-14

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others:

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Summary
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- night lost to strong winds, high humidity and clouds.

Night Log 2011-10-13

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others:

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Summary
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- clouded out completely
- no science data taken tonight

The day the Ferrari's came!

Phil's recent car news really threw down the gauntlet & SALT has responded accordingly...

Breakfast yesterday was interrupted by a low, roaring buzz that sounded like an angry swarm of somethings approaching the plateau.

Fortunately, it was only the arrival of the new fleet of SAAO & SALT cars!

Thanks to the money saved with the budget farewell we put on for our Director, we could finally afford to upgrade the site's motley collection of vehicles.

We anticipate a dramatic improvement in our response times for call-outs (along with the consequent reduction in the amount of "time off in lieu" claimed by staff on standby) & look forward to an overall increase in efficiency thanks to elevated morale stemming from our new corporate identity.

All the peasant cars were moved over to the northern end of the parking area to make space for the new ones.

Looking like a bloom of red spring flowers, they packed the SALT parking lot.

Alas - this was in fact a visit from the Ferrari Club!  A total of 45 cars & about 80 members, most from Gauteng, made the "arduous" trek out here & toured the Observatory.

The visitors were divided into two groups which took turns exploring the visitors centre & the top of the hill. 

Up top they proceeded to the small telescopes on foot, leaving the little people to gawk around the parking area without having to sacrifice tooo much dignity.

Here's the second group making their way up...

This ought to have been a video clip with sound...  Siiigh :)

Spot the plucky little Nissan bakkie jockeying to lead the rest of the fleet!

Other than the spectacular array of mutilated bugs on the front ends, most of the cars were still remarkably clean & shiny by this stage - how do they do that?!

An interesting way to think about all this is to consider that much of a second SALT could be built for the cost of this impressive collection of wheels.  Not that SALT handles as well, nor sounds as good, when going flat out ;)

They actually weren't All red.

Let's hope that our sleepy little Karoo town had enough petrol to equip everyone to make their way back to the real world - or at least to Laingsburg or Touws River!  Perhaps by now the Sutherland/Matjiesfontein road's littered with dried out red cars?

After any good binge, the hangover's almost inevitable & in this case the contrast's particularly stark: the weather's tanked, the swish cars are gone & it's just us chickens again...

But for a few of us, driving between the Observatory & town will never be the same again ;)

Night Log 2011-10-12

SA: Paul
SO: Patrick
Others:

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Summary
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- night lost to cloudy weather, conditions made more difficult with the bright moon and fluxuating humidity.

- took some engineering data:
2011-2-UW_RU-002

Night Log 2011-10-11

SA: Alexei
SO: Siphelo
Others: Denis, Luis, Paul, Olga

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Summary
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=> Strange weather with high humidity jump in the middle of the night,
with seeing 2.5-3" and nice 1" seeing at the end of the night.

=> MOS commissioning obserations during first half of the night.
Guidance with slit viewer was tested as well.

=> Science data for program:
2011-3-POL-006
2011-3-RSA_UKSC-008
2010-1-RSA_OTH-001 (twilight time)

=> Five Lick standards were observed during bad seeing weather.
Stars were observed with slits 0.6" and 1.25"

Night Log 2011-10-10

SA: Alexei
SO: Siphelo
Others: Denis, Luis, Olga

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Summary
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=> Stable weather with bright moon.
No science data were taken because contnious tracker faults.

Night Log 2011-10-08

SA: Alexei
SO: Siphelo
Others: Denis, Luis, Olga

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Summary
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=> Hard night. Clouds all the night with rain in the morning.

=> Additional MOS tests with dummy tracks.

=> Additional tests for guidance with slit viewer.

=> Tried to observe some Lick standards.
Four stars of 4th magnitude were observed during this night.
Poor conditions.

Night Log 2011-10-07

SA: Alexei
SO: Siphelo
Others: Luis, Denis, Olga, Keith, Jonathan

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Summary
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=> Very hard night. Started clear, but clouds came very fast.
Tried to open during all the night,
without any success because clouds. Some rain drops in the morning.
No any science data.

=> Serious tracker failure was solved by stand-by team.

A Tarantula on SALTICAM

This astronomy gig calls for pretty pictures now & again so here's one of the Tarantula Nebula (aka 30 Doradus or NGC 2070), a huge star formation region in one of our neighbouring galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (about 160,000 light years away).  If this complex were as nearby as the famous Orion Nebula, it would be bright enough to cast shadows on Earth!  The stars in the central cluster are about 1-2 million years old & emit energetic UV radiation that excites the surrounding clouds of hydrogen & causes the gas to glow..

This colour composite image is the result of six 5-second frames obtained through 3 filters, known as SDSSg, SDSSr & SDSSi.  These filters transmit green, red & near-infrared light respectively so this isn't quite what the nebula would look like with the naked eye.  The plan was to fill in the gap between SALTICAM's two CCD chips by combining images with the object on either side of the frame, but unfortunately we moved the telescope a bit too far so we get to keep the gaps this time!

Night Log 2011-10-06

SA: Alexei
SO: Siphelo
Others: Anthony, Janus, Ockert, Luis, Olga

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Summary
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=> Clear night with poor seeing.

=> Half night of MOS commissioning.
Some data were taken to check quality of alignment.

=> Science data for:
2011-3-RSA_UKSC-007
2011-3-RSA_OTH-001
2011-3-RSA_UKSC-008

=> Spectral flats for 2011-2-RSA_POL-001

Night Log 2011-10-05

SA: Alexei
SO: Siphelo
Others: Anthony, Janus, Luis, Olga

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Summary
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=> Half night of MOS commissioning.
Some software revisions.

=> Some science data for:
2011-3-RSA_OTH-001
2011-3-POL-006

Night Log 2011-10-04

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Alexei, Janus, Luis, Deneys, Anthony, Amanda, Ockert, Olga, Siphelo

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Summary
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- Half night of MOS commissioning, mainly software revisions,
lost second half to humidity.

- Data for 2011-3-RU-003 (spec.phot std)

News from the North...

Well - what a difference a month & a hemisphere can make!  Recall that at the end of August, the Sutherland bunch gave Phil & Anne a memorable send-off, complete with a thoroughly swish set of Karoo wheels...

Details are sketchy but here they are again - back in the UK, sporting somewhat more horsepower!  It's unclear quite how the understated cart made this subtle yet profound transformation, but there's a distinct possibility that the change is related to unseasonably hot weather experienced throughout the English countryside over the past weekend.

With the northern hemisphere soon to lurch into winter, we eagerly await further updates with respect to this matter.  In the meantime, it's encouraging to hear that South African wines still feature prominently in Phil's diet :)

Night Log 2011-10-03

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Janus, Anthony, Simon, Amanda

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Summary
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- Started cloudy, cleared, then spend first half of
night with guide probe commissioning.

- After a 30m technical problem, science for rest of
the night, until tech. problems again. Programs observed:
2011-3-UKSC-003
2011-3-RU-008

Night Log 2011-10-02

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others:

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Summary
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- Whole night lost to rain and clouds

Night Log 2011-10-01

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: Taka + 3 x visitors from IRSF and 1.9-m

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Summary
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Lost night to clouds and humidity, did not open.

Night Log 2011-09-30

SA: Petri
SO: Zolisa
Others: science journalists Jari Makinen and Mikko Suominen

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Summary
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- Poor seeing in the beginning, then lost couple of hours
in the middle of the night to clouds, but productive after
that.

- Science data for:
2011-2-RSA_OTH_UKSC-001
2011-3-POL-006
2011-3-IUCAA-003
2011-3-IUCAA-005 (tw.flats)
2011-3-GU-001
2011-3-UKSC-003