Night Log 2013-12-30

SA: Paul
SO: Thea
Others: Cara, Rudi, Hitesh, Bruno

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Summary
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- a clear night with mediocre seeing.

- obtained data for the following programs:
- 2013-2-RSA_OTH-018 (P0)
- 2013-2-RSA_RU-002 (P1)
- 2013-2-RSA_OTH-016 (P2)
- 2013-2-RSA_OTH-006 (P1)
- 2013-2-RSA_POL-001 (P2)

Night Log 2013-12-29

SA: Paul
SO: Thea
Others: Cara, Hitesh to help with the first alignment

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Summary
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- full night of observing with one or two technical issues. seeing was good for most of the night.

- obtained data for the following programs:
- 2013-2-RSA_OTH-018 (P0)
- 2013-2-RSA_RU-002 (P1)
- 2013-2-RSA_OTH-016 (P2)
- 2013-2-RSA_DC_OTH-001 (P1)
- 2013-2-UNC_RSA_RU-001 (P2)

Night Log 2013-12-28

SA: Paul
SO: Thea
Others: Cara, Rudi+friends

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Summary
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- had decent conditions for the first half of the evening. conditions got worse during the second half. closed up just before 03:00 due to high humidity.

- obtained data for the following programs:
- 2013-2-UW-002 (P1)
- 2013-2-RSA_OTH-017 (P2)
- 2013-2-RSA_OTH-005 (P3)
- 2013-2-UKSC-008 (P3)
- 2013-2-RSA_OTH-016 (P2)

Night Log 2013-12-27

SA: Paul
SO: Thea
Others: Cara, Rudi + friends

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Summary
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- a productive night with moderate seeing and clear skies.

- obtained data for the following programs:
- 2013-2-RSA_RU_UKSC_OTH-001 (P1)
- 2013-2-RSA_OTH-016 (P2)
- 2013-2-RSA_OTH-006 (P1)
- 2013-2-UW-005 (P1)
- 2013-2-RSA_POL-001 (P2)
- 2013-2-UW_RSA-001 (P2)

Night Log 2013-12-26

SA: Paul
SO: Thea
Others: Cara, Hitesh for a short visit

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Summary
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- mediocre seeing tonight. closed just before 02:00 due to high humidity.

- obtained data for the follwing programs:
- 2013-2-RU-001 (P0)
- 2013-2-POL_OTH-001 (P1)
- 2013-2-RSA_POL-001 (P3)
- 2013-2-RSA_OTH-017 (P2)
- 2013-2-GU-001 (P1)

Night Log 2013-12-25

SA: Paul
SO: Thea
Others: Cara

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Summary
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- HO HO HO, merry xmas! was a fairly productive night with good seeing. had to align a couple of times due to conditioning issues during the afternoon. closed a bit earlier than expected due to high humidity.

- obtained data for the following programs:
- 2013-2-UKSC-010 (P3)
- 2013-2-UKSC-008 (P3)
- 2013-2-POL_OTH-001 (P1)
- 2013-2-IUCAA_OTH-003 (P1)
- 2013-2-IUCAA-001 (P2)
- 2013-2-RSA_DC_OTH-001 (P1)

Night Log 2013-12-24

SA: David
SO: Veronica
Others:

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Summary
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Twas the night before Christmas and the elves were busy trying to get some data for all the good SALT boys & girls.

Those in luck tonight, before the dreaded ridge cloud came upon us:
2013-2-UNC_RSA_RU-001 (F-P; Sheila; P2)
2013-2-UW-002 (MOS; Diamond-Stanic; P1)

A very merry Xmas and successful 2014 to all our customers and friends!!

Night Log 2013-12-23

SA: David
SO: Veronica
Others:

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Summary
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Promising start to the night, but SE wind change brought humidity and ridge clouds just after midnight.

Still, observed following programs:
2013-2-RSA_UKSC_OTH-002 (McBride; P0)
2013-2-POL-_OTH-001 (Hajduk; P1)
2013-2-RSA_OTH-001 (Kraan-Korteweg; P2)

Night Log 2013-12-22

SA: David
SO: Veronica
Others:

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Summary
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Another nice night with data for the following programs:
2013-2-RSA-008 (Viljoen; P2)
2013-2-POL_OTH-001 (Hajduk; P2)

Night Log 2013-12-21

SA: David
SO: Veronica
Others:

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Summary
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Started of a magnificent evening with clear skies, light wind, low humidity. RH shot up towards end of twilight. Seeing ~1.5-2.5".

Programs done for:
2013-2-POL_OTH-001 (Hajduk, P2)
2013-2-UKSC-004 (Kalari; P1)
2013-2-RU-001 (Jha, P0)
2013-2-UW-001 (Orio, P1)
2013-2-UKSC-004 (Kalari; P1)
2013-2-RSA_POL-001 (Miszalski; P2)

Night Log 2013-12-20

SA: David
SO: Veronica
Others:

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Summary
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Excellent clear night with stable seeing.
Completed RSS observations for the following programs:
2013-2-RU-001 (Jha; P0)
2013-2-DC-002 (Wegner; P2)
2013-2-GU-001 (Kollatschny; P1)
2013-2-IUCAA_OTH-003 (Bhalerao; P1)
2013-2-HET-003 (Curtis; P2)
2013-2-RSA_POL-001(Miszalski; P2)
2013-2-RSA_OTH-003 (Kniazev; P2)

Night Log 2013-12-19

SA: Lisa
SO: Veronica
Others: Luke, Ms T, Keith (+ helpers: Nimrod & Paul R by phone), Alexei for a while, Ray on Skype & Steve C on ajbber to fix the DIMM & all-sky camera

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Summary
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More HRS SV data taken for:

2013-2-RSA_HET-001 (Gilbank)
2013-2-POL-008 (Konacki)
2013-2-RSA_OTH-022 (Buckley)
2013-2-UKSC-011 (Elkin)

Happy Holidays Everyone! See you all again in the New Year :)

Night Log 2013-12-18

SA: Lisa
SO: Veronica
Others: Luke & Her Royal Tortoiseness (asleep)

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Summary
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Our first ridge-cloud free night in a couple of weeks!

Data taken various HRS SV projects:

2013-2-DC-007 (Chaboyer)
2013-2-RSA_HET-001 (Gilbank)
2013-2-POL-008 (Konacki)
2013-2-UW-008 (Mathieu)
2013-2-UKSC-011 (Elkin)

Night Log 2013-12-17

SA: David
SO: Fred
Others: Lisa & Luke

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Summary
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Full Moon, so focussing on HRS SV programs:
2013-2-HET_OTH-002
2013-2-POL-008
2013-2-RSA_HET-001
2013-2-UKSC-012

All ran quite smoothly until ridge cloud hit at ~2:30

Night Log 2013-12-16

SA: David
SO: Fred
Others: Luke & Lisa

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Summary
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Bright Moon so dedicating to HRS Science Verirfication proposals:
2013-2-DC-007 (Chaboyer)
2013-2-RSA_HET-001 (Gilbank)
2013-2-RSA_OTH_UKSC-001 (Buckley)
2013-2-POL-008 (Konacki)

Then we closed by 01:30 due to ridge cloud.

Night Log 2013-12-15

SA: David
SO: Fred
Others: Lisa, Luke, Emma, Jean

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Summary
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Lots of clouds at sunset followed by rising humidity and ridge cloud. Managed to do a RV std for HRS HS + ThAr before dewpoint limit.

Night Log 2013-12-14

SA: David
SO: Fred
Others: Lisa, Luke, Emma & Jean

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Summary
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Lots of clouds at the start, which only worsened.
Tried one HRS SV observation (2013-2-POL-008, Konacki) before clouds got too thick.

Night Log 2013-12-12

SA: David
SO: Fred
Others: Lisa, Luke, Emma

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Summary
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Weather looked iffy to start, but steadily improved and had spells of clear skies and good seeing.

Completed P0 on CXOU_J005758.4-722229 (Bartlett)
Rest of night on HRS SV programs:
HR1146, HD10700 (Gilbank)
HD38529b (Buckley)
CPD-73 420 (Niemczura)

Night Log 2013-12-11

SA: David
SO: Fred
Others: Lisa 'n Luke & Emma

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Summary
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Patchy clouds and rising humidity killed all hopes.

Night Log 2013-12-10

SA: Lisa
SO: Thea
Others: Luke, Fred, David & Emma

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Summary
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* Opened briefly but to no avail as the humidity shot back up as soon as we pointed to a target!

* RSS flexure tests taking arcs during the course of a long track.

* RSS stray light tests.

Night Log 2013-12-09

SA: Lisa
SO: Thea
Others: Luke, David & Veronica + Hannah & Carel for a visit

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Summary
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Another whole night lost to weather :(

Night Log 2013-12-08

SA: Lisa
SO: Thea
Others: Luke

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Summary
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Grim weather all night, but charmed & entertained by Danger Mouse (who we rescued from the the 40-inch control room)!

HRS internal arcs galore & more file admin...

Night Log 2013-12-07

SA: Lisa
SO: Thea
Others: Luke, Ray via Skype

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Summary
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Overcast with intermittent drizzle - didn't open at all.

Various HRS tests & sorting through accumulated data.

Night Log 2013-12-06

SA: Lisa
SO: Thea
Others: Luke

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Summary
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Successfully tested HRS's Nod & Shuffle option for Low Resolution mode, just before the weather packed up! Well done Eddy & Janus :)

Night Log 2013-12-05

SA: Paul
SO: Thea
Others: Luke, Simon, Eddy & Ray via Skype

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Summary
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- R.I.P. Tata Madiba... :( :::

- Not shut down by humidity afterall & the telescope was extremely well behaved! Lots of high-priority targets to keep the trainee SA busy & big thanks to Paul & Thea for all their help!

- Data taken for:

2013-2-RSA_UKSC-002 (P0)
2013-2-RSA_OTH-018 (P0)
2013-2-UW-002 (P1)
2013-2-HET-005 (P3)
2013-2-UW-002 (P1 - HRS)
2013-2-RSA_OTH-022 (P1 - HRS)
2013-2-RSA_OTH-021 (P0 - HRS)

Night Log 2013-12-04

SA: Paul
SO: Thea
Others: Lisa, Luke

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Summary
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- closed before midnight due to high humidity.

- we were only able to obtain data for 2013-2-DC-005

Night Log 2013-12-03

SA: Paul
SO: Thea
Others: Lisa, Luke, Deon

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Summary
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- had a great sub arcsec start to the evening, but it got spoiled by the midnight humidity.
- took advantage of the initial good seeing with HRS
- got one P0 target done before we had to close

- obtained data for:
- 2013-2-DC-007 x2 (HRS)
- 2013-2-IUCAA-003 (HRS)
- 2013-2-DC_RSA-001 (P0)

Night Log 2013-12-02

SA: Paul
SO: Veronica
Others: Lisa, Luke

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Summary
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- rain kept us from opening the telescope tonight.

Night Log 2013-12-01

SA: Paul
SO: Veronica
Others: Lisa, Luke, Keith

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Summary
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- dismal observing weather tonight. had thin cloud coverage and seeing around 4'' for most of the night.
- did one or two HRS SV observations. spent the rest of the time doing P3 and P4 targets and showed Lisa the ropes.

- obtained data for the following programs:
- 2013-2-RSA_OTH_UKSC-003 (P4)
- 2013-2-AMNH-002 (P4) x2
- 2013-2-RSA_POL-001 x3
- 2013-2-GU-001 (P1)

Night Log 2013-11-30

SA: Paul
SO: Veronica
Others: Lisa, Luke

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Summary
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- bad weather tonight, closed early due to high humidity. attempted a couple of programs.
- had a tracker issue which put us out of business for a while.

- obtained data for the following programs:
- 2013-2-AMNH-002 (P4) x2
- 2013-2-UKSC-010 (P3)

Night Log 2013-11-29

SA: Paul
SO: Veronica
Others: Luke, Deon, Chantal

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Summary
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- a couple of small technical issues at the start of the evening. no show stoppers though. we were able to obtain science data before high humidity closed us down just before 01:30.
- our first night in the new control room

- obtained data for the following programs:
- 2013-2-POL_OTH-001 (P1)
- 2013-1-DC_RSA_001 (P0)

NOOOoooo - you guys Can't Go!!!

The long nights continued - starting with evening twilight sky flats that reliably triggered the loud Sun Alarm in the control room (ensuring that everyone was wide awake when the games began)!

& by the time we finished up in the mornings, the Earth's shadow filled the western horizon.

In between, we were occasionally treated to delightfully good atmospheric conditions.

& other times driven insane by awful seeing due to moisture-laden south easterly winds.

But, fortunately, a good braai can undo a lot of damage...  For the non-Afrikaans-speakers out there: "ons gaan nou braai" means "we're going to have a BBQ".  & indeed - everything Will be OK!

So: HUGE thank you to Hamish & Egan for their inspired effort on Saturday - that really hit the spot! 

& extra well-done for arranging an absolutely perfect Karoo afternoon for it :)

Now the bad news...  Last Monday we had to get together for the obligatory group photo as members of the HRS team started flying home on 18 November :(  First off were Sean & Jürgen, followed by David, Eddy & Michael on Thursday & then Ray left on Sunday.  SALT really can't thank you guys enough for everything you've done & for the incredible way in which you've done it...  It's been such a privilege & a total blast working with you all!

Luke & I actually bailed too as SALT's currently down for an engineering week, but we'll get back on-sky over the weekend to take more HRS Science Verification data during the next couple of weeks.  Be warned though that we'll be all lonely & miserable again...

Night Log 2013-11-26

SA: NONE
SO: Fred
Others:

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Summary
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Telescope unavailable for engineering work. No observations tonight.

Night Log 2013-11-24

SA: Brent
SO: Thea
Others: Luke, David

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Summary
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Frustrating night with software issues and poor stack and poor seeing.
Some HRS commissioning data taken for
2013-2-DC-007
2013-2-IUCAA-003
2013-2-UKSC-012
2013-2-RSA_OTH-020

Night Log 2013-11-22

SA: Brent
SO: Thea
Others: Lisa, Ray, Luke, David

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Summary
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Clear night with mostly good seeing. HRS commissioning data taken for

2013-2-HET_OTH-002
2013-2-UKSC-011
2013-2-IUCAA-003
2013-2-DC-007
2013-2-RSA_HET-001
2013-2-RSA_OTH-022
2013-2-POL_OTH-002

Night Log 2013-11-20

SA: Brent
SO: Thea
Others: Lisa, Ray, Luke, Michael, David, Eddy, Hitesh, Francois + visitor

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Summary
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Excellent seeing at start of night, but had payload issues that really slowed down HRS commissioning. High humidity settled in from midnight. Data taken for:

2013-2-HET-003 (P2 RSS)
2013-2-RSA_UKSC_OTH-002 (P0 RSS)
2013-2-DC-007 (HRS)
2013-2-RSA_HET-001 (HRS)

Night Log 2013-11-19

SA: Amanda
SO: Fred
Others: Deneys, Keith, Brent, HRS team, Francois, Hitesh

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Summary
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. Bright night with high wind, high humidity, and clouds. Open at twilight and closed before it ended.

. Took data for HRS, stray light tests for RSS, and FP MR arcs.

Night Log 2013-11-18

SA: Amanda
SO: Fred
Others: Deneys, slighty reduced HRS team, Eben

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Summary
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. Bright night with moderate wind and poor seeing (2-3"). A variety of payload and guider errors cost a few hours of observing time.

. Data taken for the following programs:
2013-2-RSA_OTH-023
2013-1-HET_OTH-002 (acq. only, no HRS data)
2013-2-DC-007
2013-2-UKSC-011
2013-2-RSA-013
2013-2-UW-008

Night Log 2013-11-17

SA: Amanda
SO: Fred
Others: Deneys, HRS team + Michael Albrow

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Summary
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. Bright night, closed due to high humidity and clouds.

. Goodbye (at least for now!) to HRS Jurgen and Sean: go well.

Night Log 2013-11-16

SA: Amanda
SO: Fred
Others: Deneys, Lisa, Ray

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Summary
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. Cloudy, raining night.

. MOS stability calibrations, MR FP arcs, HRS calibrations.

HRS Science Verification observations underway!

Jürgen did some final tweaks to the optical alignment on Tuesday after the necessary modifications were made to the new baffle.

Having successfully tested things on Tuesday & Wednesday nights, all that remained was to brick up the rest of the thermal enclosure on Thursday morning.

David & Jürgen went after this & by the time those of us that had observed all night came up after lunch, Her Royal Spectrographness was completely entombed in grey styrostone bricks for the first time!  With that, the system could finally set about stabilising properly...

We've been fortunate to have good weather & a fairly well-behaved telescope for much of the week & so we've been able to tackle a number of the HRS Science Verification observing proposals.  The honours for the most impressive acquisition image have to go to Marcin Hajduk's binary central star of the planetary nebula LHA115-N61 in the Small Magellanic Cloud.

This V = 14.5 magnitude object yielded HRS's first emission line spectrum.  The image below shows a section of a 20 minute red channel frame that was obtained in Medium Resolution (MR) Mode.  It contains strong features due to H-alpha, sulphur, nitrogen & helium, visible as the bright blobs in the horizontal rows known as orders.  A number of sharp lines from atmospheric emission (night sky lines) are also visible & are repeated in both the object & sky fibres, the latter appearing immediately below each object order.  The features in the sky spectrum will be used for accurate background subtraction when cleaning up the object frames.  The tiny, randomly distributed, white specks are spurious features caused by cosmic rays striking the detector.

We've also taken a bunch of evening & morning twilight flat fields with sky illuminating both fibres at once.  This is what the Sun & our atmosphere look like in High Resolution (HR) Mode in the red channel: exceeedingly nifty!

But then the weather began packing up on Friday night.  The seeing deteriorated spectacularly from a stable 1.5" to >5" within a matter of minutes as the wind swung around to the dreaded south east quadrant.  It's been downhill since, but we hope to get back on-sky on Sunday night, before Sean & Jürgen leave us on Monday.

The bad weather's had its advantages too though as it allowed plenty of time to take the necessary calibration frames, including internal (HRS) arcs, external (SALT calsys) arcs, flat fields, dark frames & biases for the various instrument modes.  The image below shows the High Stability (HS) Mode fibre pair illuminated with the SALT calibration system's flat field lamps.  This was done while the iodine cell was in the beam - hence the enormous number of narrow absorption (dark) lines towards the top of the frame.

The red internal Thorium-Argon (ThAr) arc frames (belonging to the HS mode) used to saturate horribly due to some extremely bright lines.  These have now been reduced to something manageable through the introduction of a small turquoise filter on the front of the lamp - thanks Jürgen!

Midst all this & to break the monotony of being sentenced to writing quick-look software, Luke's acquired a fine black marker pen which has taken his egg art to a whole new level.  He's particularly proud of this week's Minion egg & promises more exciting characters in the coming days :)

Fingers crossed the weather clears up soon & we can get back on-sky tomorrow!

Night Log 2013-11-15

SA: Amanda
SO: Fred
Others: Eben, Deneys, HRS team

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Summary
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. Cloudy, bright night. Closed most of the night due to heavy clouds and high humidity. Opened near end and tried to take data well into twilight.

. Data taken for 2013-2-RSA_HET-001 and 2013-2-RSA_OTH-023 (both HRS).

Night Log 2013-11-14

SA: Amanda
SO: Fred
Others: Deneys, HRS team

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Summary
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. Bright night, closed @01:20 due to ridge cloud and high humidity.

. Data taken for the following programs:
standard stars for previous science obs.
2013-2-RSA_HET-001 (HRS)
2013-2-POL-007 (HRS)
2013-2-HET_OTH-002 (HRS)

Night Log 2013-11-13

SA: Amanda
SO: Fred
Others: Deneys, HRS team

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Summary
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. Bright night with very few cirrus and great to ok seeing (0.6"-2").

. Data taken for the following programs:
2013-2-RSA_HET-001 (HRS)
2013-2-RSA_OTH-023 (HRS)
2013-2-IUCAA-003 (HRS)
2013-2-RSA-016 (P0 DDT)

Night Log 2013-11-12

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Fred, Amanda, Deneys, Janus and the HRS team. Francois over the phone at the beginning of the night.

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Summary
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Cloudy start to the night but cleared fairly soon. Good seeing (~1") during most of the night.

HRS commissioning data for:
2013-2-HET_OTH-002
2013-2-UKSC-011
2013-2-RSA-013
2013-2-RSA_HET-001

South Africa successfully starts its hunt for Dark Energy

SALT has been very successfully at following-up early supernova candidates from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), and Mat Smith and Bruce Bassett have sent around a press release highlighting their recent  results.   

Figure 1: Left: Before image of the host galaxy. Right: the exploding supernova is clearly visible in the left of the galaxy. The supernova has the label: DES13C1feu and fades over about a month. 

A research team in the Western Cape has confirmed the discovery of two supernovae using the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) at Sutherland. The team used candidates supplied by the international the Dark Energy Survey (DES) which will, working hand-in-hand with huge telescopes like SALT, put the most precise constraints on the composition and expansion of our Universe to date.

“This is a very auspicious start to South Africa’s involvement in one of the most important cosmological surveys in the world today. Over the next five years the Dark Energy Survey will discover several thousand potential supernovae. Confirming their identity is critical to the success of the project” said Dr Mat Smith, from the University of the Western Cape, who led the analysis of the supernova data.

Supernovae are exploding stars that are so bright that they can be seen across the observable universe. “By following supernovae as they explode and then fade we can figure out how far away they are and by doing this for many different supernovae, we can map how the expansion rate of the universe is changing with time” said Eli Kasai, a Namibian PhD student involved in the project and based at the University of Cape Town.

He continued by saying: “These supernovae, in combination with other cosmic probes, will put the tightest constraints on the nature of the Universe, until the Square Kilometer Array, the world’s most powerful radio telescope, is built in South Africa, Namibia and several other African partners”
Supernova are detected by looking at the same patch of sky for variable objects, on a regular basis. However, while the DES team is able to find a many objects that were not there before, the vast majority of these objects are asteroids, variable stars and even the black holes in the centre of galaxies, which can mimic the appearance of a supernova.

“The only way to definitively classify a supernova is to use a large telescope like SALT to split the light into its colours and study it’s spectral features. Using this technique, researchers “fingerprint” and classify the supernova. However, each supernova can only be seen for a couple of weeks. This is where SALT is invaluable. It’s huge mirror allows us to see very distant objects and sophisticated abilty to rapidly target objects allows us to respond as soon as we have a viable candidate” said Dr Steve Crawford, of the South African Astronomical Observatory.

Supernovae are still one of the best ways to measure how fast the universe is expanding. “Although we have known that the universe is expanding since around 1930, it was only about 15 years ago, in 1998, that we first realised that the universe is actually speeding up.” said Prof. Roy Maartens, an SKA Chair at the University of the Western Cape. “The discovery of the accelerating universe was so important it was awarded the 2011 Nobel prize for physics.”

“The thing that is hard to understand about cosmic acceleration” said Prof Bruce Bassett, one of the team members from AIMS, SAAO and UCT, “is that the Universe should be slowing down, not speeding up, so it’s a complete mystery. It is like visiting your grandmother one Sunday expecting a sedate tea, only to find her hosting a massive techno party with everyone high on speed. It’s really surprising!”

The first supernovae detected with the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) are designated DES13C1feu and DES13X1kae. They exploded approximately 900 million and 1.8 billion years ago, respectively. “These explosions occurred hundreds of millions of years ago, long before dinosaurs existed on earth, but the light from these cosmic explosion has only just reached the Earth, to be seen by the Blanco telescope in Chile, two weeks ago.” Said Mat Smith. The supernovae were then observed by SALT and classified as supernova in under a week, highlighting the quick turnaround required to carry out this ambitious international science project.

The project team consists of researchers from the University of the Western Cape (UWC), the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) and the University of Cape Town (UCT) and uses the Southern African Large Telescope based at the Sutherland observatory. SALT is one of the largest optical telescopes in the world (http://www.salt.ac.za). The Dark Energy Survey is a five-year international

cosmology collaboration using (http://www.darkenergysurvey.org). 

 Figure 2: SALT spectrum for DESX1kae. Over-plotted in red is a template spectrum used to classify the supernova. 

Figure 3: Zoomed in image of DESC1feu, highlighting the supernova in one of the spiral arms. For a brief time the supernova – a dying star - can be as bright as the 100 billion stars of the host galaxy. 

Night Log 2013-11-11

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Janus and the HRS team.

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Summary
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Cirrussy start to the night which cleared at around midnight. Seeing was 2-3" until around 2am,when the wind turned NNW and the seeing dropped to around 1"

Science for 2013-2-RSA_UKSC_OTH-002 (P0 and P1).

And lots of HRS science commissioning data! :)

Here We Go Again!

So our egg decorating efforts paid off - the whole team has returned!  Pity Paul didn't stay longer, but now we have Sean Ryan (the project's Scientific Advisor) joining us for about a week.  Here's his primary mirror mugshot!  Welcome Sean:)

Jürgen's sporting a classic all-in-one summer ensemble this time round - beautifully accessorised with a designer fore-optics baffle that's custom-anodised & stylishly finished with thousands of M2 cap screws festooning all the edges...

David should feel extremely proud of his dazzling creation which fits perfectly & takes nothing but stray light away from the gorgeous optics of Her Royal Spectrographness.

Hannes popped by just in time for a quick tour before we closed up the tank...

 
With the baffle installed, Eddy & Jürgen did a quick focus run to check that everything still looked ok.

Happy with the results, it was time to fire up the vacuum pump & chase all the air out of the tank.

Then for re-installing all the styrofoam floor panels!

A non-trivial & fairly entertaining exercise :)

Everything only just fits & some minor alterations were required to accommodate new cables & pipes that weren't in place when we first tried out all the panels.

So as not to tempt fate, we only built up the first two layers of the grey styrostone (super-sized LEGO for pseudo-grown-ups) that will eventually enclose the whole tank.  

Back up after dinner with a promising-looking sky & time for Sean's first encounter with The Astronomer's Hat.  Generous of Ray to give that up without too much of a fight...

For all the fans wondering whatever happened to Luke?  Well - he's Still Here, the poor guy's now into his 11th straight week up on the hill, the only one to not have left here for more than 3 days at a time.  He's still coding bravely & has yet to go postal on us, but we're keeping a close eye on him just in case ;)

The sun came up 15 minutes ago & although we were sorely tempted to shoot a few quick twilight flats, the threat of the truly horrendous sun-alarm blaring at us at this point was enough to make us pack up & head down the hill.  Good night!

SALT Science Day

Here are the talks from the SALT science day being hosted at North West University in Mafeking.   I'll be updating these throughout the dat

SALT Science Day:

Status updates and recent science results Monday, 11 November 2013
Senate Suite, North West University, Mafikeng

Session 1
Chair: Mike Shara

1. Welcome & opening remarks
   
2. Overview & statistics for 2013 Semester 1 (D. Buckley)
   
3. Results from RSS commissioning tasks (A. Schröder)
   
4. Status of the SALT proposal tools (C. Hettlage)
   
5. Updates to the SALT Science Pipeline (S. Crawford)
   
6. SALT scheduling software (B. Miszalski)
   
7. Telescope throughput & fringing (P . Väisänen)
   Coffee Break
   

Session 2
Chair: David Buckley

8. SALT observations of Circinus X-1 and SXP1062 (M. Schurch)
   
9. SALT Spectra of Gravitationally Lensed Herschel Systems (L. Leeuw)
   
10. LIRGs with RSS (P . Väisänen)
    
11. RESOLVE with SALT (L. Naluminsa) 
12. Dissecting the most massive galaxies using SALT (I. Loubser)
    
13. Star formation histories of Lenticular galaxies (S. Barway) 
14. Studies of Emission-line stars and HII-Galaxies with SALT (A. Kniazev)
    
15. Preliminary SALT results of kinematics and stellar populations of dEs
    located in the Fornax cluster (J. Mentz)
    
    

Session 3
Chair: Ted Williams

14. Science results from Dartmouth (B. Chaboyer)
    
15. Observing Faint SNe from the Dark Energy Survey (S. Crawford)
    
16. Science results from Rutgers (J. Hughes)
    
17. Science results from AMNH (M. Shara)
    
18. Science results from UW (E. Wilcots)
    
19. Science results from IUCAA (A. Srianand)
    
20. Nature of the Gamma-ray Transient Nova Sco 2012 (Shaw)
21. Science results from Poland (M. Sarna)
    Coffee Break
    

Session 4
Chair: Brian Chaboyer

22. SALT observations of symbiotic stars and related objects (B. Miszalski)
    
23. Update of SALT observations of new SNRs in the SMC (D. Buckley)
    
24. Science results from University of Göttingen (W. Kollatschny)
    
25. Science results from University of Canterbury (M. Albrow) 
26. Science results from UNC (C. Clemens) 
27. Science results from HET (L. Ramsey) 
28. Update on the Cerenkov Telescope Array (CTA) project (I. Loubser) 
29. Raising the Profile of SALT Astronomy(C. Flanagan) 

Night Log 2013-11-10

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Janus. The HRS team.

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Summary
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Thin cirrus night with good seeing.

Science data for:
2013-2-POL_OTH-001 (P2) x2
2013-2-DC-003 (P3)
2013-2-RU-001 (P0) - rejected
2013-2-HET-004 (P3)
2013-2-HET_OTH-001 (P0)
2013-2-RSA_POL-001 (P3)
2013-2-GU-001 (P1)

Night Log 2013-11-09

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Janus.

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Summary
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Partly cloudy night with variable seeing.

Science data for:
2013-2-POL_OTH-001 (P1)
2013-2-UKSC-010 (P2)
2013-2-DC-003 (P2) x2
2013-2-UKSC-005 (P2)
2013-2-POL_OTH-001 (P1)x2
2013-2-IUCAA_UKSC_RSA-001 (P3)
2013-2-UW-005 (P1)
2013-2-RSA_UW-002 (P2)

Night Log 2013-11-08

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Janus. Steve C over the phone.

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Summary
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Beautiful not quite photometric night with great seeing.

Science data for:
2013-2-RSA_UKSC_OTH-002 (P0)
2013-2-RSA-006 (P2 - time restricted)
2013-2-POL_OTH-001 (P1) x3
2013-2-RU-001 (P0)
2013-2-RSA_RU-002 (P1)

Night Log 2013-11-07

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Janus, Luke and Steve C. Stephane Vennes for a quick visit. Keith and Vic to help with tracker issues.

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Summary
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Stunning gray night with good seeing. A couple of technical issues prevented us from taking full advantage of the night.

Science data for:
2013-1-UKSC-001 (P1)
2013-2-POL_OTH-001 (P1) x3

Night Log 2013-11-06

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Luke, Deon and Janus. Ted and NASA visitors for a while.

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Summary
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Windy and cloudy start of the night, with some technical problems in the middle and which ended with high humidity.

No science data taken tonight.

Night Log 2013-11-05

SA: Petri
SO: Fred
Others: Deon, Encarni, Keith to help, Liz for a visit

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Summary
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A pretty good and productive night though were plagued
by cirrus, and some technical difficulties, at times. Seeing
decent, though not as good as the previous several nights.
Science data for:
2013-2-RSA_UKSC_OTH-002
2013-2-RSA-004
2013-2-DC-005
2013-2-UKSC-005
2013-2-UW-001
2013-2-RSA_POL-001
2013-2-UKSC-008

HRS Detector Surgery

The lack of recent updates on the SALT High Resolution Spectrograph (HRS) reflects the fact that our Blogger-in-Chief, Lisa, has been on a well-earned vacation, rather than any inactivity by the HRS team!

HRS Blue: Round 3

The recurring issues with the instability of the HRS blue CCD mount have been tackled (hopefully once and for all) with some radical surgery. David and Paul flew out from Durham to take on the delicate job. The first step was to erect a nifty portable clean tent (kindly loaned by Spaceteq) in the mirror coating chamber so the work could take place in Sutherland. 

 The HRS blue detector being modified inside the clean room tent at SALT. From left, Dave Carter (SAAO), Pieter Swanevelder (SAAO), Paul Clark (Durham CfAI) and Willie Koorts (SAAO).

With Dave (Carter), Willie and Pieter from SAAO looking on, Paul dismantled the dewar leaving just the CCD in there. With the problematic adjustment mechanism fully extracted some nice new kinematic seats were installed along with some G10 insulating washers (to keep the detector side of the adjustment plate from being cooled unnecessarily) and a new cold finger with flexible copper braids. This also meant some quick mods to one or two internal components were necessary which were completed in double quick time courtesy of SALT tech ops - thanks again guys! That same afternoon the CCD was re-mounted and aligned using a travelling digital microscope.  

 Inspecting the business end of the blue detector. From left, Pieter, Dave & Paul

Paul using the nifty digital travelling microscope used to check the positioning and tip/tilt of the CCD.

Paul and Willie working on the blue detector.

Not quite everything went to plan though - the following morning the CCD wasn't quite cold enough so the dewar had to be taken back off again to add some more copper braids to the cold finger. However, a quick & dirty focus run was done to verify that the CCD had come through the process unscathed. 

Post-fix test image of the blue CCD showing good focus

It would have been foolish not to repeat the fix on the red, so David and Paul set about repeating the installation of the kinematic seats on the red (the solid cold finger had previously been installed when the red dewar was overhauled in Durham).

All this was completed by Wed 30 Oct in time for Paul to enjoy a meal & some drinks in town before flying back to Durham. We're not sure how much he actually enjoyed the drinks though, this one a chili flavoured Witblitz that would have made excellent rocket fuel!  

Night Log 2013-11-04

SA: Petri
SO: Fred
Others: Deon, Luke, Simon

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Summary
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Seeing and image quality-wise an absolutely great night.
Had some cirrus going through making target selections
difficult at times, and a few tracker problems cost us
maybe 45min, but got good quality (hopefully) data for:
2013-2-DC-005 (x2)
2013-2-RSA-008
2013-2-RSA_OTH-005
2013-2-RSA_OTH-006
2013-2-RSA_RU-002
2013-2-DC-003

Night Log 2013-11-03

SA: Petri
SO: Fred
Others: Deon, Luke

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Summary
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A good productive stable night again, though cirrus was
getting thick for a couple of hours. The seeing excellent, ranging 1.0-1.5". Early part of night saw poor alignments
due to bad telescope conditioning. Science data for:
2013-2-RSA-008
2013-2-DC-005 (x3)
2013-2-RU-003
2013-2-RSA_RU-002
2013-2-RSA_OTH-005

Night Log 2013-11-02

SA: Petri
SO: Fred
Others: Deon, Luke, Janus on phone

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Summary
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A dark remarkably stable night with good 1.5" seeing;
though efficiency was hit a bit by software troubles.
Data for:
2013-2-RSA_UKSC_OTH-002
2013-2-RSA-008
2013-2-UW-005
2013-2-RSA_RU-002
2013-2-DC-005
2013-2-UKSC-008 (x3)

Night Log 2013-11-01

SA: Petri
SO: Fred
Others: Deon, Luke

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Summary
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Welcome to 2013-2. Though it was pretty much the same
than last night of 2013-1. Clouds and high humidity. No data.

Night Log 2013-10-31

SA: Petri
SO: Fred
Others: Deon, Luke

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Summary
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Night lost to clouds and rain. And so ends the 2013-1
semester. Hoping for better weather for 2013-2.

Night Log 2013-10-30

SA: Petri
SO: Fred
Others: Deon, Keith, David + HRS crew for a while

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Summary
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No observations due to wind, humidity and cloud.
Most of the night spent doing Fabry-Perot calibrations.

Night Log 2013-10-29

SA: Petri
SO: Veronica
Others: Luke, David, Fred

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Summary
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A very nice stable and dark night with seeing varying
between 1.5" and 2". Science, including ToOs, done for:
2013-1-RSA_OTH-012
2013-1-UW-009
2013-1-POL-003 (x2)
2013-1-RSA_OTH-023 (x2)
2013-1-RSA_OTH-024
2013-1-DC-003

Night Log 2013-10-28

SA: Petri
SO: Veronica
Others: Luke

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Summary
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Clear dark night with variable seeing, pretty productive, got many high priority blocks done as well as couple of hours of throughput tests with burst mirror. Humidity stayed just below closing limit for the last 2 hours. Data for:
2013-1-POL-003 (x4)
2013-1-RSA_DC_OTH-001
2013-1-RSA_OTH-016 (x2)

Night Log 2013-10-27

SA: Alexei
SO: Thea
Others:

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Summary
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=> Unstable weather. Clouds from the evening.
Started to be better close to the morning.

=> Some data were taken for the following programs:
2013-1-UKSC-008 (P1)

Night Log 2013-10-26

SA: Alexei
SO: Thea
Others:

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Summary
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=> High humidity and heavy clouds

=> No science data were taken

Night Log 2013-10-24

SA: Alexei
SO: Thea
Others:

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Summary
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=> Rain, high humidity and heavy clouds.

=> No science data were taken

Night Log 2013-10-23

SA: Alexei
SO: Thea
Others:

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Summary
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=> Unstable weather with some clouds and bad seeing.
Were closed by humidity finally.

=> Some data were taken for the following programs:
2013-1-RSA_OTH-020 (P2)
2013-1-RSA_DC_OTH-001 (P3)
2013-1-RSA_OTH-008 (P3)
2013-1-RSA_OTH-023 (P0)
2013-1-RSA_OTH-026 (P1)
2013-1-AMNH-002 (P4)
2013-1-UNC_RSA_RU-001 (P3)

Night Log 2013-10-22

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others: Alexei

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Summary
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Dark and relatively clear at the start evolved into grey and scattered clouds that cleared at times with good seeing. Data taken successfully for

2013-1-RSA_POL-001
2013-1-RSA_OTH-024
2013-1-RSA_OTH-012
2013-1-RU-001
2013-1-UW-008
2013-1-UKSC-008
2013-1-RSA_OTH-016

Night Log 2013-10-21

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others:

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Summary
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Night lost to high humidity.

Night Log 2013-10-20

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others: Luke

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Summary
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Rain, high humidity and thick clouds. No science data taken tonight.

Night Log 2013-10-19

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others: Luke

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Summary
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Bright night with clouds and poor seeing at start, clearing after middle of night but had several payload problems preventing routine HRS observations. Data taken for
2013-1-RSA_POL-001
2013-1-RSA_DC_OTH-001
and HRS commissioning.

Night Log 2013-10-18

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others: Luke, Francois

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Summary
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Bright night with lots of cloud at start of night and poor seeing (3-4 arcsec) making observing challenging.
Data taken for
2013-1-RSA_POL-001
and HRS commissioning, before closing around 1am due to high humidity.

Night Log 2013-10-17

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others: Luke, Francois, Paul R, Thea & David

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Summary
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Various comms errors prevented alignment at start of night , then ridge cloud settled in nice and snug for the night. No science data taken. Did a few stray light tests for RSS.

Night Log 2013-10-16

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others: Luke, Eben, Paul R, Francois, Jonathan

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Summary
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A bright night with thin cirrus and telescope structure problems preventing observing past 8:20 pm. Data taken for
2013-1-UKSC_HET_OTH-001
2013-1-RSA_POL-001

Night Log 2013-10-15

SA: Encarni
SO: Thea
Others: David dB, Francois, Hitesh, Luke, Brent

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Summary
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Cirrussy night with bright Moon, ~30 km/h wind and OK seeing.

Science data for:
2013-1-POL_RSA-001 (P3) x4

HRS commissioning data for the second half of the night.

Night Log 2013-10-14

SA: Encarni
SO: Thea
Others: David dB, Francois, Luke

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Summary
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Cirrussy night with relatively decent seeing. Frustrating end of the night with technical problems preventing us from doing HRS commissioning work.

Obtained science data for:
2013-1-RU-001 (P0)
2013-1-POL_RSA-001 (P3) x2
2013-1-UW-008 (P1) x2
2013-1-UNC_RSA_RU-001 (P2)

A Busy Week Goes By

Another busy week up here - starting off with some mods to the FIF guider to prevent the cable wrap from slipping out of place & causing problems.  A thin plate was attached to act as a retainer for the cables & a few other tweaks were made - thanks Eben & Ockert!

& we got to welcome a new electronics tech in the form of David de Bruyn.  Here he is, learning the ropes & getting his tracker legs - Great hat by the way :)

Those of us that're obsessed with fibre safety will sleep a little easier now that the last exposed section on the top of the tracker has been covered with a nice solid plate.  Dankie Johan!

Time for some shameless Fabry-Perot marketing...  On the last night of David B's week as SA, he shot this awesome H-alpha sequence of a supernova remnant that had been discovered with the XMM X-ray satellite.  Really neat to see different parts of the nebulosity light up as one scans along in 10 angstrom wavelength steps.

As if we haven't had enough tracker excitement lately, Wednesday was declared H4 service day.  This is the bottom left hexapod, as seen from the tracker platform - the rest will get their turns in due course.

It's a bit disconcerting to climb up to install the fibres when one of the hexapods is simply Not There! 

Happily the fibres all went back in without too much fuss.  The sky ones are quite a challenge, but the object fibres are easy enough to reach & poking a small mirror in behind the FIF confirmed that they're all seated properly.

With the HRS guider, the FIF & the fibres all re-installed, & the sky looking great, we were good to go!  Except - our arc exposures showed no lines?!  Turns out the shutter controller wasn't doing enough to drive the shutter so it wasn't opening at all - aaargh!!  Toggling it manually didn't help & so this looked like a show-stopper (this is the spare controller, the original's already been sent back to Durham for repairs).  Enter the heroic CfAI team: offering expert advice, after midnight, via Skype & email - including ways to reconfigure the shutter controller & thereby saving the day!

We got the big screen in the control room set up to display all the remote desktops needed to run the HRS software...

From everything being in pieces earlier in the day, we managed to get on-sky & send light down the fibres.  Here's the exposure meter running on a 7th magnitude star, albeit with thick clouds wafting over...

Absorption lines galore in this high resolution blue frame of HD10180!

SALT Astronomer Encarni sneakily snapped this shot of us at 04:50 on Thursday morning...  While we may look fairly shattered, it'd been a long day & we'd overcome a number of significant obstacles before managing to get data in each of the 4 modes.  So in spite of all the software, shutter, payload & telescope issues, it ended up being a Great night! :)

After several weeks of reasonably good behaviour, Luke was eventually rewarded with a trip up the CCAS tower...  

CCAS is undoubtedly one of the niftiest SALT locations - thanks Francois!

After that we decided to fire up the iodine cell on HRS & see how that works...

Heating a small iodine crystal inside an evacuated glass tube up to about 80 C causes the iodine to sublimate & the light passing through the cell ends up with a rich forest of absorption lines superimposed.  This allows for extremely accurate radial velocity measurements - which will help us to hunt down exoplanets in future!

Here's what a red frame with the iodine cell on looks like - a huge number of absorption lines down at the blue end of the red chip.

While waiting - in vain - for the wind to drop on Friday night, we started running HRS tours.  The admission fee is wearing a silly outfit, having your photo taken & being published on the blog ;)

The weather was infuriatingly bad for 3 consecutive nights so we took all the calibration frames we could stand.  These included some rather funky ones (shown here with the intensity inverted) which had HRS's internal Thorium Argon arc lamp going down the one fibre (upper trace) & the SALT calibration system's quartz-tungsten-halogen flat field lamps going down the other (lower trace).

Eventually we were driven to decorating Luke's night lunch & we decided to pay homage to our far-away & much-missed colleagues back in Durham...

Jürgen!

Ray!

Eggy!

& David!

OK - enough of  that, it's midnight & Luke's hungry...

In fact, anyone with such neat, legible hand-writing surely needs to be regarded with extreme suspicion, if not fear as well.  How on earth did he ever get a PhD with writing like this?!

 

That's is it from me for a while - 6 weeks since we started all this & it's time for a break...  Thanks to the Sutherland Black Eagles for an incredible send-off as I drove down past the cliff yesterday afternoon!

 

& to the pair of Jackal Buzzards for the escourt out the observatory gate.

Good luck to Luke as he holds the fort until the Durham guys start to reappear in about a week!  Also to Paul & David for the blue camera surgery which I hate to be missing - please take Lots of photos...  See you all again on the 10th of November!