Night Log 2013-07-30

SA: Paul
SO: Fred
Others: Hitesh, Francois, Simon and Garith for a brief visit

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


- perfect observing conditions with stable seeing. a couple of technical issues came up during the night which prevented us from taking full advantage of the weather conditions.

- we obtained data for the following programs
- 2013-1-UC-001
- 2013-1-DC-003
- 2013-1-HET_RU_RSA_OTH-001
- 2013-1-POL-001
- 2013-1-RSA_OTH-008 (x2)
- 2013-1-DC-001

Night Log 2013-07-29

SA: Paul
SO: Fred
Others: Hitesh, Francois, Johan

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


- a later than expected start due to some technical issues. various issues crept up during the night as well which kept us from completing more programs.

- weather was clear and photometric with very good seeing for most of the night.

- obtained data for the following programs:
- 2013-1-DC_RSA-001
- 2013-1-HET_RU_RSA_OTH
- 2013-1-IUCAA-002
- 2013-1-RSA_DC_OTH-001
- 2013-1-GU-002
- 2013-1-RSA_OTH-008
- 2013-1-UW-008

Dartmouth and SALT in the news

Here's a recent article about Ryan Hickox and Kevin Hainline using SALT to study AGN.   They have a recent paper out using SALT spectra to study obscured AGN and this article does a great job highlighting the work they are doing.

Night Log 2013-07-28

SA: Paul
SO: Fred
Others:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


- another night of bad weather. did not open.

Night Log 2013-07-26

SA: Paul
SO: Fred
Others: Garith

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


- most of the night lost to strong winds in the anticipation of a cold front that came in at 03:00. did not open.

Some Sutherland Scenes

For those that don't get to spend enough time in this rather unusual place - a few scenes captured during the past week...

Vic & Annie's garden service in action, note the guy in the middle working on the cactus!

SA of the week, Brent, has been spreading the faith about Red Espresso...

It's great stuff, but there can be some quite alarming glitches in the preparation process!

The SALT control room after dark...

The Green Amanda with her custom-made cable-wrangling tool for the payload.

Eben in his workshop, working on his latest awesome creation.

Ever wish you could bake fresh bread while out in the middle of nowhere?  Well, speak to Eben about one of these... :)

Why one should Never drive out of Sutherland without your 300 mm lens on!  Ended up missing the close-up shot of this juvenile Martial Eagle that was cruising around near the first Ceres turn-off.

Not much further along - an adult Martial Eagle!

A Pale Chanting Goshawk fleeing the paparazzi...

The Black Eagle nest on the cliff about 30 km from Matjiesfontein is in use again this year!  Spot the parent sitting on the huge nest to the left of centre in this pic.

Karoo rainbow...

Winter in the Hex River Valley.

Snow coming down on the Hex River Mountains.

Night Log 2013-07-25

SA: Petri
SO: Fred
Others: Garith, Amanda, Johan

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


* a clear night with unstable seeing.
* we had a couple of technical issues which cost us some time.

* we obtained data for the following programs:
- 2013-1- RSA_POL-001 (x3)
- 2013-1-DC_RSA-001 (P0)
- 2013-1-UW-002
- 2013-1-RSA_OTH-014
- 2013-1-UW_OTH-001
- 2013-1-UNC_RSA_RU-001

The HRS leaves Durham!!

These great pics courtesy of David Bramall & the team at the CfAI to mark the historic day - 24 July 2013 - when the HRS left Durham!

We were politely requested to keep any "Wow - it looks just like a giant turkey getting ready for the oven!" comments to ourselves...

This cosy container will be Home On The Sea for all the instrument's not-too-delicate bits for the next few weeks.

Time for a short walk in the English sunshine...

Before crawling in & settling down for the long trek south!

All the optics + other fragile stuff will fly down in a few weeks & join these bits in Cape Town, then the whole lot will be delivered to Sutherland.  We can start counting sleeps now :)  39-ish...

Night Log 2013-07-24

SA: Paul
SO: Fred
Others: Rudi, Garith

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


- relatively unstable night with medeocre seeing. clouds came in during the last hour of the night.

- obtained data for the following programs:
- 2013-1-RSA_POL-001
- 2013-1-UC-002 (x2)
- 2013-1-RSA_OTH-006 (x4)
- 2013-1-UKSC_HET_OTH-001
- 2013-1-DC_RSA-001

Engineering first light for the FIF's guider imaging system

Ockert's been busy in the lab getting the optics for the FIF guide probe integrated.  From right to left in the pic below you can see the fold mirror, the system's three lenses & then the small CCD camera (the black tube on the left).

In this view you can see the CCD (off to the right) being reflected in the fold mirror (left).

Next up, it was time to check that the imaging system works...

Very Okkie - any excuse to shoot at a target!

 

Engineering First Light - Great Stuff  :)

Night Log 2013-07-23

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others: Paul, Rajeev

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


Snow and high humidity and thick heavy clouds. No observations.

The HRS thermal enclousure

A thermal enclosure to house the HRS has been built inside the spectrometer room.

Tape on the floor marks where the various components of the instrument will go.

If only optical benches were as simple as this!
 

A hole cut in the roof of the thermal enclosure will allow the fibres to enter this room to reach the instrument.

There's also an outer room adjacent to the one that the vacuum tank will go in.  This is where the cryo-coolers for the two cameras, the vacuum pump for the tank, all of the electronics for the instrument & the cleanroom clothes will be kept.

 

Tech Ops has installed power, glycol, air-handling & network infrastructure for the two rooms.

The air-conditioning system was installed last week, but it was too cold in Sutherland to be able to test its cooling capability!

To put all this in perspective, here's a look at the weather conditions at SALT this afternoon.  The outside temperature was below 3C, the wind was about 75 km/h, the humidity was nearly 99%, the pressure was dropping & I escaped just before the snow started - welcome to winter in Sutherland!

Fortunately the HRS enclosure will be kept at a constant 20C so it will be one of the better places to be confined to up here during the latter stages of winter ;)

SALT Status Update for July 2013

Lots and lots of updates in this SALT Status Update for July!  Quick
reminder that 2013-2 proposals are due on 1 August and HRS science
verification proposals are due on 15 August.  Please see
http://salt4scientist.salt.ac.za/ for more details.

======================
Recent Science Results
======================

Strum et al. included SALT observations of their study of the
interesting X-ray binary SXP 1062.  The neutron star in this source
has a large spin rate and spin down rate, and this makes it an
interesting candidate to study accretion physics.  Comparing the
properties of the SALT spectrum to previous observations indicated an
increasing size or density to the disc around the star.  For more
details, please see: http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.6022


=======================
SALT Astronomer Vacancy
=======================

A new SALT astronomer position is currently being advertised following
Tim Pickering's resignation to take up a position at STScI.  The
deadline for applications is 31 August and for more details, please
see: http://www.saao.ac.za/salt-astronomer/

=======================
SALT Talks
=======================

There have been a wide range of talks given about SALT recently.  Here
are links to some of them:

Science talks at the Warsaw board meeting:
http://pysalt.salt.ac.za/meetings/board_20130521/

Lisa Crause's updates on the HRS and Collimator upgrade (lots of
pictures): http://pysalt.salt.ac.za/talks/SALT_Spectrographs.pdf

Steve Crawford's talk to the ThunderKATs group (with audio recording
of the talk):
http://pysalt.salt.ac.za/talks/salt_thundercat_20130711.mov

If you have given a talk recently about SALT or your SALT observations
and you would like us to host a copy, please let us know about it at
salthelp@salt.ac.za.

=======================
SALT HRS Update
=======================

At the end of this week the HRS is being shipped to SALT following its
dismantling after the last finishing touches and testing. Although the
throughput measurements in the lab were not as straightforward to do
as anticipated, the results seem to indicate values fairly close to
the predictions. One task completed just before disassembly was the
gluing of small thin anti-reflection coated glass disks to the fibre
inputs, to improve throughput and focal ratio degradation and mitigate
against dust.  With the High Resolution Spectrograph's imminent
migration from Durham to Sutherland, there has been a wide range of
activities in preparation for it.  Please see Lisa Crause's blog posts
to get all of the updates including first light for the fibre feed!

http://saltastro.blogspot.com/2013/07/coming-soon-to-telescope-near-us.html
http://saltastro.blogspot.com/2013/07/installing-fibre-instrument-feed.html
http://saltastro.blogspot.com/2013/07/first-light-for-fif.html

As a reminder, the call for HRS science verification proposals closes
on 15 Aug (see
http://salt4scientist.salt.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/SALTHRS-SV-Call.pdf).


========================
SAMS (edge sensor) update
========================

Due to a combination of factors, the factory acceptance testing of the
first batch of edge sensors has had to be postponed from mid-July to
late September. The encouraging news is that the behaviour of all the
sensors tested to date, in terms of temperature and humidity
insensitivity, is within specification. The first subarray tests (the
7 central segments) are now due to begin in the latter part of the
year.



============================
Abstracts for SALT Proposals
============================

Interested in what science other partners are doing?  SALT abstracts
are now available via the WebManager for all members of the SALT
consortium.  Click on the 'Abstract' tab in the WM menu to access the
abstracts for the last three semesters.

============================
Data Downloads
============================

Principle contacts for a proposal can now request to download data of
past observations as well as observations of spectrophotometric
standard stars from the WebManager.  From the 'Summary of executed
observations' table on the proposal page, check the box for 'Request
data' or 'Request spectrophotometric standards', click on submit, and
the data should be staged for you to download within 24 hours.  The
principle contact will receive an email with the link to the data as
soon as it is ready for you to access.


============================
RSS Simulator Update
============================

To improve the performance of the RSS, the zeropoint for the
articulation angle will be reset for the 2013-2 Semester.  This should
result in an increase in the throughput for observations done in
littrow, however, this will result in the predicted wavelength of the
observations shifting.  This change will only come into effect on 1
November for the 2013-2 semester, but please use the most recent
version of the RSS simulator (v4.0) for the most up to date
simulations.

===============================
Analysis of Velocity Stability
===============================

Alexei Kniazev has provide a report on the velocity stability of RSS
spectroscopy as measured for emission line sources.  The report has
been posted on the Science Wiki and is accessible here:
https://sciencewiki.salt.ac.za/index.php/RSS:_Radial_Velocity_Accuracy_using_Emission_Lines


=============================
Director's Discretionary Time
=============================

At the last board meeting, the Board decided to allocate 5 hours of
discretionary time to the SALT Science Operations Manager (David
Buckley) starting in 2013-2.  Details of how this will be managed
still need to be finalized by the SSC, but if you are interested in
applying for this time at some point, please contact
salthelp@salt.ac.za.

============================
Website Questionnaire
============================

Want to help improve the quality of the SALT website?  Please take a
moment to complete the following questionnaire by August 1 and
provides some insight on how we are doing:
http://salt4scientist.salt.ac.za/salt-website-questionnaire-2013/

Night Log 2013-07-22

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others: Janus, Lisa, Mickey Mouse

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


A clear but very windy night. Data taken for these programs:

2013-1-RSA_OTH-007
2013-1-RSA_OTH-014
2013-1-RSA_POL-001
2013-1-AMNH-002

before closing up at 21:40 due to very strong winds which did not abate.

Night Log 2013-07-21

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others: Janus, Lisa, Eben

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


Congratulations to everyone involved with the fibre feed to HRS, the FIF, especially to Janus and Ockert. The FIF guiding was tested on sky tonight with panache, gusto and lots of squeals of delight at watching the psychedelic guidance camera (see below for Lisa's blog posts).

Janus has seen the light....through some fibres! hooray!

In other news, we did some more observing (with a few painload hiccups leftover from FIF talking to things), taking data for

2013-1-UKSC_HET_OTH-001
2013-1-GU-002
2013-1-RSA-002
2013-1-RSA_POL-001
2013-1-RSA_DC_OTH-001
2013-1-UNC_RSA_RU-001
2013-1-GU-001
2013-1-UC-002

First Light for the FIF!!

Unrelenting humidity kept SALT closed last night, but today the weather's been perfect so it was Game On for on-sky testing of the FIF...  The image below shows the FIF acquisition camera view of the first out-of-focus star observed through this system! :)

First starlight into the FIF system!

Changing the telescope focus (rather than manually adjusting the FIF's position in the payload - a job for another day - revealed that the bright star was in fact a double (upper right panel in the pic below).  Once the star was centred up & the FIF stage moved to the appropriate station, the image dutifully landed on the star fibre (lower left panel)!

Light focused onto the test star fibre.

Then the sky fibre stage position was selected & the starlight again appeared as required :)  Janus tweaked the software to refine the centroiding & the stage moves, but everything really did just work Beautifully, first time!  Very Well Done guys, especially to Janus & Ockert :)

A stage move & then the light falls on the test sky fibre...

We even caught a glimpse of SALT dancing a celebratory jig as progressively fainter stars were observed to guage the sensitivity of the FIF's acquisition camera...

SALTICAM captures the excitement of the moment!

The fact that the little Lodestar camera works brilliantly bodes well for the FIF autoguider which will also use one of these.  & since we already have a bunch of them lined up for various applications (both on SALT & the SAAO telescopes), this really is great news!

One of the Starlight Xpress Lodestar cameras in our collection.

Night Log 2013-07-20

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others: Janus, Lisa

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


High humidity all night. No observations.

Installing the Fibre Instrument Feed

Much effort in the lab over the past months has got the SALT Fibre Instrument Feed (FIF) ready for installation within the payload's FIF bay. 

The payload's empty FIF bay.

 The payload's auxillary mirror folds light emerging from the atmospheric disperson compensator (ADC), situated above the spherical aberration corrector (SAC), into the set of fibres that will feed the HRS.  The FIF's translation stages allow the appropriate "star" & "sky" fibre-pairs to be selected for the desired HRS observing mode (either low, medium or high resolution mode, or the high-stability mode).

The FIF stage assembly & part of the instrument's autoguider, ready for installation.

Here's Eben & Janus lifting the FIF up to its bay in the payload's rotating structure.

FIF going in!

Without much fuss, the 3 attachment points were secured & the FIF was In!

Securely in position in the FIF bay.

Next, Janus could attach the test fibres to the stage.

Test fibres connected to the stage assembly.

& connect up all the cables...

Cables connected...

Moment of truth: can the software talk to the hardware & make the little green lights go on?  YES It Can!  :)

The FIF's LabVIEW interface.

The software could also move the stages, but one of them didn't go all the way to where it was commanded to & so the stage assembly had to be brought back down for inspection.  The section that the autoguider will attach to could remain in place in the FIF bay, a really nice Tech-Ops-friendly design!

FIF bay with the incomplete autoguider parts still in place, but the FIF stage assembly removed.

Inspection quickly revealed that an anti-backlash nut on one of the lead screws had locked up so the offending part was removed for now.  After some more cable-wrap management, the stage assembly was re-installed & successfully tested over its full range of motion.

As is so often true in life, getting the troublesome nut out of the way solved the problem...

The only remaining snag was the weather which didn't permit on-sky testing.  Forecasts for the weekend look promising though so we hope to send starlight down the test fibres in the next day or 2!

Night Log 2013-07-19

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


Night lost to high humidity. Ridge Cloud all night...

All night long (all night), All night (all night)
All night long (all night), All night (all night)
All night long (all night), All night (all night)
All night long! (all night), Ooh, yeah (all night)

Springboks pronking all in the veld
See the rhythm all in their ears
Life is good, wild and sweet
Let the ridge cloud linger on...(Linger on, linger on, linger on...)
Feel it in your socks and feel it on your brow
Let the humidity take control
We're going to Watch Movies, Lightsaber Torch Play, Internet, forever
Come on and drift along
We're going to Watch Movies, Lightsaber Torch Play, Internet, forever
Come on and sing my song!

All night long (all night), All night (all night)
All night long (all night), All night (all night)
All night long (all night), All night (all night)
All night long! (all night), Ugh (all night)

Night Log 2013-07-18

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


Preparations for FIF installation. No observations tonight.

Night Log 2013-07-17

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


Preparations for FIF installation. No observations tonight.

Coming soon to a telescope near us!!

We have much to look forward to over the coming months as the "laat lammetjie"* of SALT's First Generation instruments - the HRS - will be hopping on a ship in less than a week to begin making its way to its new home!

The pre-ship acceptance testing took place at the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation in Durham in early June, affording us the chance to explore this amazing beast inside & out.  Though not before donning thoroughly comprehensive clean-suits & doing some polite begging to get my "unclean" camera allowed into the clean-room...

Thanks Janus for this shot of Field Agent Blogger in action inside the tank!

Fantastic to get to check out the spectacularly beautiful optics housed within the instrument's 4-m long vacuum tank!  I'll bore you with the details when all the bits arrive & get re-assembled in September, but in the meantime: here are some photos to pique your interest :)

* "laat lammetjie" is Afrikaans for a "late lamb", an expression used to describe a child that arrives on the scene many years after its siblings...
 

Night Log 2013-07-16

SA: Alexei
SO: Veronica
Others: Brent

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


=> Night started with heavy clouds, but after first two hours weather improved
and was very stable with good and moderate seeing.

=> Data were taken for the following programs:
2013-1-HET_OTH-001
2013-1-UW_OTH-001
2013-1-RSA-006
2013-1-UW-008
2013-1-POL-001
2013-1-IUCAA-004
2013-1-RSA_UW-002
2013-1-RSA_DC_OTH-001
2013-1-IUCAA-001

Night Log 2013-07-15

SA: Alexei
SO: Veronica
Others:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


=> Night lost to high humidity and heavy clouds

Night Log 2013-07-14

SA: Alexei
SO: Veronica
Others:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


=> Night lost to hight humidity and heavy clouds.

=> Gain calibrations were done.

=> Spectral flats calibrations were done.

Night Log 2013-07-13

SA: Alexei
SO: Veronica
Others:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


=> Another unstable night with a lot of passing clouds. Also have payload problems.

=> Twilight flats were taken during evening time

=> Some data were taken for the following programs:
2013-1-RSA_POL-001 (x3)
2013-1-RSA-005

Night Log 2013-07-12

SA: Alexei
SO: Veronica
Others:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


=> Very unstable night with very strong wind and many clouds.

=> Only few observations were accepted finally for the reason of weather:
2013-1-GU-002
2013-1-RSA_POL-001 (x2)
2013-1-UW-002
2013-1-RSA_DC_OTH-001

Night Log 2013-07-11

SA: Alexei
SO: Veronica
Others:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


=> Another stable photometric night, but with moderate seeing.

=> Data were taken for the following programs:
2013-1-RSA_OTH-019
2013-1-AMNH-004
2013-1-RSA_OTH-024
2013-1-UW-007
2013-1-RSA_POL-001
2013-1-HET-004
2013-1-RSA_OTH-008
2013-1-RSA-011 (x2)

Night Log 2013-07-10

SA: Alexei
SO: Veronica
Others:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


=> Stable photometric night with good seeing.

=> Data were taken for the following programs:
2013-1-UW-004
2013-1-RU-001
2013-1-POL-001
2013-1-HET_RU_RSA_OTH-001
2013-1-UW_OTH-001
2013-1-RSA-005
2013-1-RSA-011
2013-1-RSA_OTH-008

Night Log 2013-07-09

SA: Tim
SO: Fred
Others: carl m, blaise t, alexei, steve c, christian, tim-oliver

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


photometric night with steady ESE winds and somewhat variable seeing. largely devoid of technical issues, though we did have to re-align fairly quickly due to the first stack being rather poor. however, the stack was quite stable through the 2nd half of the night thanks to the largely stable temperatures.

completed blocks for the following programs:

2013-1_HET_OTH-001
2013-1-UW-005
2013-1-RSA_OTH-024
2013-2-RSA-001
2013-1-RSA_OTH-011
2013-1-IUCAA-001
2013-1-UNC_RSA_RU-001
2013-1-RSA_DC_OTH-001
2013-1-RSA_UKSC-001

and thus completes my last SALT observing shift!

Night Log 2013-07-08

SA: Tim
SO: Fred
Others: carl m, blaise t, christian h, tim-oliver, jonathan

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


cirrus brings good seeing. it is known.

calm, stable night with varying levels of cirrus, but only enough to slow us down significantly for about an hour. seeing was good to great all night and sub-arcsecond for long stretches in the 2nd half. regularly got guider EE50 of 1.3-1.4 with very stable stack. re-aligned once, but didn't strictly have to. the only significant technical issue was PCON's inability to perform F-P observations with >60 sec exposures which was documented the previous night. this requires full attention to fix ASAP so that we can complete the sky line calibration tests before i leave.

completed blocks for the following programs:
2013-1-RSA_OTH-010
2013-1-RSA_OTH-024
2013-1-RSA-004
2013-1-HET-004
2013-1-RSA_OTH-014
2013-1-UKSC_HET_OTH-001
2013-1-RSA_UW-001
2013-1-UW-009
2013-1-RSA-011
2013-1-UNC_RSA_RU-001

rejected block for 2013-1-UW-008 on account of clouds thickening too much during observation. an attempt for 2013-2-RSA-001 was thwarted by PCON bugs.

Night Log 2013-07-07

SA: Tim
SO: Fred
Others: carl m, blaise t, christian h, tim-oliver h

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


productive night with good weather apart from occasional cirrus and good seeing until the last couple hours. installed the diffuser material to check the F-P calibration and it gives the same results as the open mask when looking at the calsys. weren't able to complete the on-sky test within the queue gap due to issues with PCON. however, the calibration results from the calsys data are very strange. there are either large shifts or large changes in B depending on which combination of lines you use in the analysis. need to look at that more closely tomorrow.

completed 10 blocks for the following programs:

2013-1-RSA_OTH-010
2013-1-UKSC_HET_OTH-001
2013-1_RSA_OTH_UKSC-001
2013-1-HET-004
2013-1-UW-007
2013-1-HET_RU_RSA_OTH-001
2013-1-RSA-004
2013-1-RSA-011
2013-1-UNC_RSA_RU-001 x2

Night Log 2013-07-06

SA: Tim
SO: Fred
Others: carl m, blaise t

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


funky night weather-wise with humidity and seeing all over the map. humidity closed us for about an hour at one point when it spiked to almost 95%. then it dropped quickly, yo-yo'ed around, and eventually settled into the mid 30's at the end. seeing was steady and decent for long stretches, but became highly variable towards the end of the night.

had a slew of various techincal problems that slowed us down and culminating in a power outage that cut out the last bit of the night. the most severe technical issue was the coffee maker failing completely. when you attempt to use it, all of the water pours out of the back of the machine rather than into your cup. not ideal.

in spite of all that, the night was fairly productive. took over 2000 SCAM images which ground poor saltfirst into a pulp. completed blocks for the following programs:

2013-1-UW-004
2013-1-RSA_OTH-010
2013-1-GU-002
2013-1-UNC_RSA-002
2013-1-AMNH-004
2013-1-RSA_DC_OTH-001
2013-1-UNC_RSA_RU-001 x2 (1 accepted, 1 rejected)

Night Log 2013-07-04

SA: Tim
SO: Fred
Others: carl m, blaise t

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


fog, wind, rain, and cold. RIDGE CLOUD is rampant so no observations. attempted to do some FP engineering, but various PCON/PDET issues prevented us from doing more.

Night Log 2013-07-03

SA: Tim
SO: Fred
Others: carl, blaise

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


had a small hope of getting something at the start and the seeing during twilight was 1". however, the humidity spiked very quickly after 19:00 and we were socked in with thick ridge cloud soon after that. night remained wet, windy, and cold with forecast for the same tomorrow. took several sets of FP rings to investigate calibratiob stability. parallelism appears to be MUCH more sensitive to wavelength than i've ever seen it before. for example, the 6678 ring would look completely fine, but 6717 obviously not. it had always been the case that if one was good, so was the other. using the same order and X/Y settings for both lines. the 6507 and 6532 lines also looked funny.

Night Log 2013-07-02

SA: Paul
SO: Thea
Others: Tim, Carl, Blaise, Garith

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


- did not open due to high humidity and ridge cloud.

- wishing Tim a great last week in Sutherland...

Night Log 2013-07-01

SA: Paul
SO: Thea
Others: Keith, Garith

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


- closed early due to high humidity. before that we had bad seeing which made life difficult.

- obtained data for the following programs:
- 2013-1-HET_OTH-001 x2 (P0)
- 2013-1-RSA-003

Night Log 2013-06-30

SA: Paul
SO: Thea
Others: Keith, Garith, Malcolm, David

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------


- entire night lost to cloud.