Night Log 2014-10-30

SA: �ric
SO: Veronica
Others: Ockert, Keith, Martin, Etienne and family

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Mirror tests at the beginning of the night, and then, humidity forced us to stay closed.
No data today.

Night Log 2014-10-29

SA: �ric
SO: Veronica
Others: Ockert, Keith, Marissa and Enrico for a late BVIT tutorial

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Some technical tests on the primary mirror segments at the beginning of the night.
Then, humidity forced us to stay closed.

Night Log 2014-10-28

SA: Brent
SO: Thea
Others: Hitesh (remotely), Eben, Ockert

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A mixed night with highly variable humidity, seeing and two power cuts.

Data taken for:

2014-1-POL_RSA-001 P1 HRS (Dark energy and the expansion rate of the Universe from quasar monitoring.)
2014-1-DC-005 P1 HRS (Determining the masses of the eclipsing binary UV Psc)
2014-1-POL_RSA_AMNH-001 P2 HRS (Looking for evidence of massive white dwarfs in symbiotic novae)

Night Log 2014-10-27

SA: Brent
SO: Thea
Others:

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Heavy clouds tonight. No observations taken.

Night Log 2014-10-26

SA: Brent
SO: Thea
Others: Marissa, Bruno

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A clear dark night with plenty of HRS science and a nice BVIT observation. Data taken for:

2014-2-COM-001 P1 BVIT (Looking for optical pulsations from pulsars)
2014-1-POL_RSA_AMNH-001 P1 HRS (x2) (Looking for evidence of massive white dwarfs in symbiotic novae)
2014-1-DC-005 P1 HRS (Determining the masses of the eclipsing binary UV Psc)
2014-1-HET_OTH-002 P2 HRS (To determine if C enhanced Metal-poor stars without heavy element enhancement is due to binarity.)
2014-1-UNC-001 P2 HRS (Emission line kinematics of RESOLVE galaxies for tracing dark matter)
2014-1-POL-001 P2 HRS (Searching for circumbinary planets)
2014-1-COM-003 P4 HRS (Study of narrow absorption lines in quasars.)

Night Log 2014-10-25

SA: Brent
SO: Thea
Others: Keith

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Entire night lost to high humidity and thick clouds.

Night Log 2014-10-24

SA: Brent
SO: Thea
Others: Hitesh (remotely), Chris Koen

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Engineering tests in first part of night before taking one science block for
2014-1-DC-005 P1 HRS (Determining the masses of the eclipsing binary UV Psc)
+ an RV std, before closing due to high humidity around midnight.

Night Log 2014-10-23

SA: Brent
SO: Thea
Others:

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Telescope offline pending tracker repair.

Night Log 2014-10-22

SA: Brent
SO: Thea
Others:

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Engineering night with tracker offline. Took HRS calibration data.

Night Log 2014-10-21

SA: Brent
SO: Veronica
Others: Ockert, Jonathan, Luke (remotely)

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Some short on sky tests at start of night to ensure telescope and HRS are back online. Will resume normal science operations tomorrow night. Data taken for:

2014-1-UNC-001 P1 HRS (Emission line kinematics of RESOLVE galaxies for tracing dark matter)
2014-1-AMNH-005 P4 SCAM (Studying the long-term behavior of classical novae after their eruptions)

Night Log 2014-10-14

SA: David
SO: Fred
Others: Hitesh, Deon

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SAMS Engineering tests

Night Log 2014-10-13

SA: David
SO: Fred
Others: Hitesh, Deon

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Engineering tests:
pointing
SAMS

Night Log 2014-10-12

SA: Encarni
SO: Thea
Others:

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Telescope offline for engineering week. No observations tonight.

Night Log 2014-10-11

SA: Encarni
SO: Thea
Others:

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Telescope offline due to engineering week. No observations tonight.

Night Log 2014-10-07

SA: Alexei
SO: Fred
Others:

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=> Tracker is off tonight. No observations.

Night Log 2014-10-06

SA: Alexei
SO: Fred
Others:

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=> Stable night with moderate seeing and low humidity.

=> Have some technical issues.

=> Data were taken for the following programs:
2014-1-DDT-003 P0 HRS (Study of a helium binary in outburst. )
2014-1-POL_RSA_AMNH-001 P1 HRS (Looking for evidence of massive white dwarfs in symbiotic novae)
2014-1-HET_UC-001 P1 HRS (Searching for the Earth-mass planet around alpha Cen B)
2014-1-RSA_HET-002 P2 HRS (Investigating the birth and evolution of X-ray binaries through their radial motion.)
2014-1-DC-001 P2 HRS (Gravitational redshifts in planetary nebulae and white dwarfs and spectra of dwarf galaxies)
2014-1-AMNH-005 P4 SCAM (x3) (Studying the long-term behavior of classical novae after their eruptions)

SALT long-slit spectroscopy of CTS C30.10: two- component Mg II line

The following is a guest post by Justyna Modzelewska from CAMK. Along with her collaborators, they have been using SALT to monitor the variability of high redshift quasars with the goal of eventually using these objets to help study Dark Energy.  The full paper can be found here.

We are currently monitor three quasars over very long timescales with the goal to determine the Dark Energy content of the Universe, but each of the spectra collected by SALT bring something unexpected. Five observations, which cover the wavelength range 5040-5720 Å , have been made of the quasar CTS C30.10 to sample the MgII line (rest frame 2800 Å), one of the strongest lines in all quasars. The high quality spectrum, usually not available for distant quasars, allowed us to make a unique decomposition of the spectrum.

Our purpose is to determine the equivalent width of the Mg II line as accurately as possible. For that, we carefully decompose the spectrum into the Fe II pseudo-continuum, power law, and the line itself. We consider 16 different templates of FeII pseudo-continuum (both observational and theoretical) and two types of functions for the line (Gaussian and Lorentzian).   As compared to our previous observations of LBQS 2113-4538 (Hryniewicz, K., et al. 2014), the observed Mg II line in CTS C30.10 has a more complicated structure  than we expected. In  type A quasars (e.g. LBQS), we see a single component; but for type B quasars (CTS), a second component appears, kinematically (red)shifted by 2700 km/s with respect to the first one.

However, our results show the existence of only one component of FeII, and, what is surprising, it is associated with the first component of MgII. The second kinematic component of the Mg II does not have the corresponding Fe II absorption. We still need to explain that theoretically. High quality data from SALT give us an opportunity to see the structure of the line that no one else could observe before, and this will shed light on the structure of quasars.

Figure 1: The best fit and residual for 3rd observation for the two kinematic components in emission of the Mg II line (dotted lines mark) and FeII theoretical template [Bruhweiler & Verner (2008),d12-m20-20-5] which is bonded to the first MgII component from the left; continuous lines show the model and the data, dashed lines give the underlying power law.

Night Log 2014-10-05

SA: Alexei
SO: Fred
Others: Lisa

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=> Stable night with very low humidity and good seeing.

=> Data were taken for the following programs:
2014-1-DDT-003 P0 HRS (Study of a helium binary in outburst. )
2014-1-POL_RSA_AMNH-001 P1 HRS (Looking for evidence of massive white dwarfs in symbiotic novae)
2014-1-HET_UC-001 P1 HRS (Searching for the Earth-mass planet around alpha Cen B)
2014-1-RSA_HET-002 P2 HRS (x2) (Investigating the birth and evolution of X-ray binaries through their radial motion.)
2014-1-UKSC-002 P3 HRS (High time resolution spectroscopic study of chemically peculiar Ap stars)
2014-1-AMNH-005 P4 SCAM (x3) (Studying the long-term behavior of classical novae after their eruptions)

Night Log 2014-10-04

SA: Alexei
SO: Fred
Others: Paul at the beginning. Francois by phone.

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=> Stable night with moderate seeing.
=> Had some technical issues most of the time.
=> Some data were taken for the following programs:
2014-1-DDT-003 P0 HRS (Study of a helium binary in outburst. )
2014-1-POL_RSA_AMNH-001 P1 HRS (Looking for evidence of massive white dwarfs in symbiotic novae)
2014-1-HET_UC-001 P1 HRS (Searching for the Earth-mass planet around alpha Cen B)
2014-1-UKSC-002 P1 HRS (High time resolution spectroscopic study of chemically peculiar Ap stars)
2014-1-RSA_HET-001 P2 HRS (Measuring exoplanets with SALT)

Night Log 2014-10-03

SA: Alexei
SO: Fred
Others: Paul, Janus by phone

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=> Stable night with good seeing at the beginning and moderate during secong half. Have technical issues during second half of the night.

=> Data were taken for the following programs:
2014-1-POL-001 P1 HRS (Searching for circumbinary planets)
2014-1-RSA_HET-001 P2 HRS (Measuring exoplanets with SALT)
2014-1-UKSC-004 P2 HRS (Studying the O Star HD 164740)
2014-1-AMNH-005 P4 SCAM (Studying the long-term behavior of classical novae after their eruptions)

Night Log 2014-10-02

SA: Alexei
SO: Fred
Others:

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=> Clear weather with moderate seeing, but were closed about 2:30 by humidity

=> Data were taken for the following programs:
2014-1-DC-005 P1 HRS (Determining the masses of the eclipsing binary UV Psc)
2014-1-POL-001 P1 HRS (Searching for circumbinary planets)
2014-1-HET_UC-001 P1 HRS (Searching for the Earth-mass planet around alpha Cen B)
2014-1-UKSC-002 P1 HRS (x2) (High time resolution spectroscopic study of chemically peculiar Ap stars)

=> Some HRS calibrations were taken

Night Log 2014-10-01

SA: Alexei
SO: Fred
Others: Eric, Ockert at the beginning of the night

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=> Did SAMS tests at the start of the evening, which was finished due to
high humidity.

=> No science observations tonight.

Night Log 2014-09-30

SA: Paul
SO: Veronica
Others:

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- did SAMS testing at the start of the evening, which got cut short due to high humidity.
- did no science observations tonight.