Night Log 2012-02-28

SA: Amanda
SO: Zolisa
Others: Steve C., Keith, Deon, Siphelo, Nic, David G., Erica Ellingson, Charl, Jari

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Summary
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. Gray to dark night with some clouds. Closed an hour before twilight because of high humidity.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2011-2-RSA-007 MOS testing -- success!
2011-3-UW-001
2011-3-UC-002
2011-3-RSA_OTH-026
2011-3-UKSC_RSA-003
2011-3-RSA_OTH-001
2011-3-POL-007 (incomplete block)

Night Log 2012-02-27

SA: Amanda
SO: Zolisa
Others: Steve C.

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Summary
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. Gray to dark night. Clouds rolled in by 01:00, after which point we shot through them and took engineering data.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2011-3-UW-002
2011-3-UW-001
MOS testing 2011-2-RSA-007
2011-3-RSA-009
2011-3-UC-002
2011-3-RSA_OTH-026
ENG_RSS (ADC tests)
ENG_SCAM (nonsidereal tracking)

standards: 2011-3-UW-001, 2011-3-UW-002, 2011-3-UW-008, 2011-3-RSA-006,2011-3-IUCAA-001 2011-3-RSA_OTH-023

It's hard to work with a burned out connection block.....

We had some excitement on Saturday night when the spectrograph unexpectedly lost power. Tech. Ops tracked down the problem to a burned out connector block in the azimuth wrap connector. Keith kindly provided show-and-tell for the appreciation of Astro. Ops. The burned out portion is clearly visible -- if you can't tell from the above photo, see the blow up below. Operations quickly resumed and we've been happily taking data since!

Night Log 2012-02-26

SA: Amanda
SO: Zolisa
Others: Deon, Steve C., Keith

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Summary
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. Another clear, dark, photometric night.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2011-3-RSA-017
2011-3-AMNH-002
2011-3-UW-008
2011-3-IUCAA-001
MOS testing 2011-2-RSA-007
2011-3-RSA-006
2011-3-GU-001
2011-3-POL-007
2011-3-RSA_OTH-023

(standards: 2011-3-POL-007, 2011-3-RSA_OTH-023, 2011-3-IUCAA-006,2011-3-GU-002,2011-3-RSA_OTH-023, 2011-3-UW-001)

Night Log 2012-02-25

SA: Amanda
SO: Zolisa
Others: Keith, Chris

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Summary
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. Clear, dark night with the morning lost due to instrument issues.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2011-3-IUCAA-006
2011-3-GU-002
2011-3-UW-001
2011-3-UW_OTH-001
2011-3-RSA_OTH-023

standards: 2011-3-UW_OTH-001

Night Log 2012-02-24

SA: Amanda
SO: Zolisa
Others: Keith, Chris

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Summary
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. Clear, dark, photometric night.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2011-3-UW-010
2011-3-UW-001
2011-3-UW_OTH-001
2011-3-RSA_OTH-026
2011-3-POL-007
2011-3-UW-002
2011-3-RSA_OTH-023

standards: 2011-3-HET_GU-001 & 2011-3-RSA_OTH-002, 2011-3-RSA_OTH-026, 2011-3-RSA_OTH-001, 2011-3-UW_OTH-001, 2011-3-UW-001, 2011-3-UW-001

Night Log 2012-02-23

SA: Amanda
SO: Zolisa
Others:

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Summary
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. Clear, dark, photometric night.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2011-3-UW-010
2011-3-RSA-006
2011-3-UW-001
2011-3-UW_OTH-001
2011-3-RSA_OTH-026
2011-3-RSA_OTH-001
2011-3-RSA_OTH-002
2011-3-HET_GU-001

Night Log 2012-02-22

SA: Amanda
SO: Zolisa
Others:

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Summary
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. Clouds and humidity forced closure shortly after evening twilight ended.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2011-3-RSA_OTH-002 (standard)
2011-3-DC_RSA-001 (standard)
2011-2-UW_RU-002

Night Log 2012-02-21

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Amanda, Hamish, Paul to help with guidance system problems

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Summary
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=> Dark night with mostly stable seeing. Slowly rising.

=> Data were taken for programs:
2011-3-DC_RSA-001
2011-3-GU-001
2011-3-RSA-029
2011-3-RSA_OTH-002
2011-3-RSA_OTH-026
2011-3-POL-001

Night Log 2012-02-20

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Charl, Johan during some time

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Summary
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=> Nice and stable night.

=> Some data were taken for the programs:
2011-3-DC_RSA-001
2011-3-RSA_OTH-002
2011-3-RSA_OTH-026
2011-3-RSA_OTH-003
2011-3-RSA-022
2011-3-GU-001

Night Log 2012-02-19

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Charl

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Summary
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=> Very stable dark night. Some clouds from the evening, but they dissapeared to midnight.

=> Data were taken for the following programs:
2011-3-UW-002
2011-3-POL-002
2011-3-RSA-029
2011-3-POL-007
2011-3-RSA_OTH-002

Night Log 2012-02-18

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others:

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Summary
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=> Unstable night with humidity rising from the evening.
Were closed at 00:45 by humidity.

=> Some data were taken for the following programs:
2011-DC_RSA-001
2011-3-UW-002
2011-3-HET_GU-001
2011-3-RSA_OTH-002

=> Make tests #5cd for Ken

=> Tests for RSS red imaging fringes. Two more filters.

Night Log 2012-02-17

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Charl, Hitesh during sunset

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Summary
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=> SE wind. Humidity rised from the evening and we were closed at 23:30.

=> Some data were taken for the following programs:
2011-3-GU-002
2011-3-POL-005

Night Log 2012-02-16

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Charl

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Summary
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=> Very nice stable night with good seeing up to 4am.
After that humidity rised and seeing went poor.

=> Data were taken for the following programs:
2011-3-DC_RSA-001
2011-3-UW-002 (2)
2011-3-RSA-029 (2)
2011-3-RSA_RU_UC_UKSC_OTH-001
2011-3-RSA-006

Night Log 2012-02-15

SA: Alexei
SO: Patrick
Others: Charl

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Summary
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=> Clear stable night. Very good seeing during the first half of the night
and very unstable during the second half.

=> Data were taken for the following programs:
2011-3-UW-002 (2)
2011-RSA_RU_UC_UKSC_OTH-001 (2)
2011-3-POL-008
2011-3-RSA-006
2011-3-POL-001

Night Log 2012-02-14

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Alexei, Charl and Patrick. Hitesh and Francois at the beginning to check mirror alignment.

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Summary
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Clear, stable, good seeing night despite steadily climbing humidity. Forced to close at 4:20 due to high humidity.

Science data for:
2011-3-DC_RSA-001
2011-3-POL-008
2011-3-RSA_RU_UC_UKSC_OTH-001
2011-3-POL-001
2011-3-RSA-006
2011-3-HET_GU-001

Attempted data for:
2011-3-RSA-015

Night Log 2012-02-13

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Charl at the beginning. Hitesh and Francoise working on CCAS remotely from CT.

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Summary
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Clear all night. Sub-arcsec seeing and really nice images on SALT for most of the night, until wind turned direction at around 2:30 and the seeing went poor. Then the wind switche direction again at around 4am and seeing went back down.

Science data for:
2011-3-AMNH-002
2011-3-RU-015
2011-3-RSA-006
2011-3-POL-007
First config only for 2011-3-RSA-023

Night Log 2012-02-12

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Charl for half of the night, helping out with various issues.

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Summary
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Clear night with mostly good seeing. Managed to work throughout despite a slow start and a couple of glitches.

Science data for:
2011-3-UKSC_RSA-003
2011-3-POL-007
2011-3-POL-005

Night Log 2012-02-11

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Charl and Eben for fixes.

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Clear night with great seeing, but plagued with technical problems. Humidity forced us to close at 23:55.

Night Log 2012-02-10

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Charl at the beginning, Eben to help with the dome shutter. Amanda and Elizabeth for a visit.

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Summary
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Night lost due to a problem with the dome shutter.

Night Log 2012-02-09

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Jari. Deon and Charl at the beginning. Francois came up to help with CCAS issues.

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Summary
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Clear night with SW wind and moderate seeing. Closed due to humidity at 03:14 SAST

Engineering data for RSS_POINT

Science data for:
2011-3-POL-001
2011-3-RSA_OTH-016

Night Log 2012-02-08

SA: Encarni
SO: Siphelo
Others: Jari filming away. Deon and Francois at the beginning

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Summary
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Nice, clear night to begin with with mediocre, variable seeing. Ridge cloud forced us to close at 00:56

Commissioning data for ENG_RSS, ENG_POINT

Some science data for 2011-3-RSA-006

Night Log 2012-02-07

SA: Tim
SO: Patrick
Others: erc, deon, jari

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most of the night lost to clouds with rain showers lurking about at the beginning and end. cleared a bit in the wee hours and managed to sneak in some fabry-perot imaging for 2011-3-RSA_RU_IUCAA-001. want to try some closed loop offset tests after that, but thick clouds rolled in and threatened rain.

Night Log 2012-02-06

SA: Tim
SO: Patrick
Others:

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Summary
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entire night lost to clouds and scattered showers and t-storms lurking about. wanted to try again to calibrate the 5900-6100 region for F-P, but the LR etalon was way off its expected calibration (~25 A) and MR was as well, but to a lesser extent.

Night Log 2012-02-05

SA: Tim
SO: Patrick
Others: deon

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Summary
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smooth, clear, dry, photometric night with decent seeing. got data for the following programs:

2011-3-DC_RSA-001
2011-3-UW-008
2011-3-POL-002
2011-3-RSA-003
2011-3-RSA_RU_IUCAA-001
2011-3-UNC-008

only issue of note was the LR etalon not acting very stable in the blue. worked ok later at H-alpha, though. no problems with the telescope or other systems.

congrats to the super bowl champion new york giants!

Night Log 2012-02-04

SA: Tim
SO: Patrick
Others: amanda, charl, eben

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got some RSS twilight flats with rho=0 and then a quick spectrum of a SN for 2011-3-DC_RSA-001. night otherwise lost to autocollimator issues and high humidity. kudos to the crew who showed up and spent their saturday night sorting out the autocollimator and then the shutter that wouldn't close.

Night Log 2012-02-03

SA: Tim
SO: Patrick
Others: charl, keith, amanda, paul r, lisa

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entire night lost to humidity and fog. day crew worked late to sort out fibre and media converter issues. worked on F-P analysis scripts and took some test data. LR calibration tested down to 4600 and works fine. tried to get calibration for 5900 region.

Night Log 2012-02-02

SA: Tim
SO: Patrick
Others:

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entire night lost to rain and fog. did a bit of closed-dome fabry-perot testing.

Night Log 2012-02-01

SA: Tim
SO: Patrick
Others: lisa, steve p

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work on RSS throughput testing during first half of night. this prevented any telescope or instrument operations. night would have been completely lost to humidity and cloud, anyway.

Night Log 2012-01-31

SA: Alexei
SO: Zolisa
Others: Tim, Patrick

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=> Whole night with rain, clouds and high humidity. No observations.