Night Log 2011-09-03

SA: Lisa
SO: Patrick
Others: Darragh, Nic, Jack, Francois

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Great clear night spent commissioning RSS slotmode (high-speed spectroscopy) - good progress was made!

Commissioning SALT's high-speed modes, + a wedding!

Darragh's taken over from Eric & the goal now is to commission the various high-speed modes for RSS & SALTICAM.  Both instruments have frame transfer masks which can either be used to blank off half of the detector (so that the exposed half can quickly be shifted into the hidden section & then read out without delaying the next exposure), or an even smaller area can be exposed using slot mode, allowing even faster sampling (up to 10 frames per second).

This slit-viewer image on the SALTICAM display shows the specially modified longslit that's been masked off (with pieces of black tape) for the purpose of slotmode spectroscopy.  The target star is just visible near the bottom end of the slitlet.

This image shows a RSS detector image of the star on the slitlet, as seen through the slot in the frame transfer mask.

Inserting a grating into the beam produces a spectrum, seen here in the centre of the slot.

Nic's had to enlisted the help of a mini-SA in the form of Jack in order to cope with all this excitement!

Here he is running off with the MOS hat...

Jack finally went to sleep in the kitchen & we couldn't afford to risk waking him so here's Chef Darragh preparing our gourmet night lunches in the control room!

On a totally different note - the blog's long overdue for some photos from Ockert & Elsabe's thoroughly brilliant wedding that took place in Tulbagh on 27 August.  

Several members of the SALT team attended, having cleaned up rather well for the big occasion!

Within seconds of the bottles of bubbly being placed on the table, Eben set about scoring the neck of one of them with a knife, in preparation for an extremely impressive demonstration of "champagne flute sabrage"...

The party finished more than 12 hours after it started - a truly memorable day & a great start to their married life!

In other news from the top of the hill...

In addition to the ongoing RSS commissioning work, another major development up at SALT is the conclusion that the new inductive edge sensors from Fogale meet spec & would thus be suitable replacements for the existing capacitive edge sensor system.  Buttons for attaching sensors have now been glued on to two of the segments.  Below we see the delicate process of flipping one of those 100 kg segments over.

Another milestone was the removal of the much loved/hated tracker access platform.  The Tech Ops team was sad to see it go, but Astro Ops has long resented how much of the primary mirror it obscures.  It's now been replaced by a draw-bridge style platform which ought to keep everyone happy (except maybe Amanda, who's yet to make peace with its ergonomic limitations) since it provides access to the tracker when needed, but folds out of the way the rest of the time.

Over on the Far Side of the plateau, two nifty new domes have mushroomed up!  These will house a pair of 0.5-m robotic telescopes from Poland.

These are part of the Solaris project which will consist of four such telescopes, two in SA, one in Australia & one in Argentina.

Having passed its waterproof test, the dome was opened slightly to give us a better look at the hardware.

The team will return in October to install the second telescope & continue the commissioning process.

All the while, the tourists just keep pouring in up here - keeping Dave & co out of trouble :)

On the wildlife front - the hostel staff bravely trapped a huge "Koringkriek" (aka Wheat Cricket or Armoured Ground Cricket), affording us a great photo-op & a chance to stretch our tolerance for hideous creepy crawly creatures...

At first our sci-fi horror movie star was reluctant to venture out of the glass jar, but eventually it did do some tentative exploring - all the while being subjected to multiple camera flashes.  Criiiinge...

Cheerio Phil and Anne photo

Night Log 2011-09-01

SA: Lisa
SO: Patrick
Others: Eric, Anthony, Darragh, Nic, also Keith & Chris for a while

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High winds prevented us opening & the weather just deteriorated through the night, but did plenty of MOS commissioning & calibration work, + RSS frame transfer & slotmode tests.

Too bad about the weather as it was Eric's last night. After all his hard work, he thoroughly deserved to walk away with a pile of zippy data... Oh well, you'll just have to come back Hooper - & make sure you fit that SA holiday into your schedule next time! Travel safely & we hope to see you back here soon :)

Multi Object Spectroscopy (MOS) Commissioning

Eric Hooper's been back from Wisconsin, working with the gang to get another RSS mode - Multi Object Spectroscopy (MOS) - commissioned during the past couple of weeks.

Here's what you see when you insert one of the laser-cut carbon fibre MOS slitmasks into the beam - all the individual slitlets & the pinholes for the reference stars appear to "light up".

The next image shows a MOS arc spectrum - each horizontal row is from a particular slitlet.

& here's a shot of the slitmask magazine - the masks on the left are the ordinary longslits & those on the right are the custom-made MOS masks.

This is one of the fancier masks that Eric tried out.  It has some very small (short) slits to allow more sky measurements to be made closer to the target galaxy.

Intrepid Dr Hooper taking MOS flat fields at 4am!

Now in a slightly more flamboyant, telemarketer mode - offering us one of the RSS longslits... :)

Lastly - here's a regular longslit spectrum.  In fact there happened to be 3 bright stars on the slit in this exposure, one of which is the X-ray transient MAXI J1836-194 that's in outburst at the moment...

Night Log 2011-08-31

SA: Lisa
SO: Patrick
Others: Anthony, Darragh, Eric, Francois, Hitesh, Nic, Jack

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Sutherland bade Phil & Anne farewell today - in *fine* style we might add... Good luck to SAAO Cape Town as they attempt to top that tomorrow! A blog post featuring the day's action will follow soon ;)

Exciting target-of-opportunity longslit spectroscopy of an unusual X-ray transient in outburst, the Universe & SALT's way of saying "so long & thanks" to Phil

Successful first light for "Massively Disappointing Spectroscopy" mode 8)