Night Log 2014-12-30

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Deon, Ana, Liam and Stephen.

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Summary
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Clear night with mediocre seeing. Again, ridge cloud forced us to close early tonight.

Science data for:
2014-2-SCI-070 P0 RSS (Spectroscopic follow-up of type Ia supernovae discovered by DES to analyse their spectral properties)
2014-2-SCI-030 P2 RSS (x2) (Identifying new ultracompact binary star systems through their spectral characteristics)
2014-2-SCI-065 P2 SCAM (Studying the long-term behavior of classical novae after their eruptions)
2014-2-SCI-066 P3 RSS (Finding the redshift and ionization of WISE-selected QSOs)

Night Log 2014-12-29

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Ana, Liam, Stephen and Mrs. Potter

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Summary
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Primary mirror edge sensor testing until 00:30, just as the ridge cloud arrived. No science data tonight.

Night Log 2014-12-28

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Stephen, Ana, Liam and Mrs. Potter

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Summary
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Clear skies and poor seeing at the beginning of the night, followed by thick cloud and high relative humidity from around 11:30pm.

Science data for:
2014-2-SCI-070 P0 RSS (Spectroscopic follow-up of type Ia supernovae discovered by DES to analyse their spectral properties)
2014-2-SCI-078 P1 SCAM (Searching for exoplanets around evolved binary stars)

Night Log 2014-12-27

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Stephen, Ana, Liam and Mrs. Potter

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Summary
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Cloudy start to the night, which suddenly cleared just before 10pm and stayed mostly clear with steadily improving seeing until the relative humidity constraints forced us to close at around 00:45.

Science data for:

2014-2-SCI-030 P2 RSS (Identifying new ultracompact binary star systems through their spectral characteristics)
2014-2-SCI-066 P3 RSS (x2) (Finding the redshift and ionization of WISE-selected QSOs)

And also worked on some more FP engineering tests.

Night Log 2014-12-26

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Anthony, Ana, Liam and Steve.

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Summary
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Cloudy night, with a surprise rain shower in the middle.
It finally cleared up enough to open up at ~2am, but with horrible seeing. Aligned the primary mirror, started taking science data and the humidity forced us to close before we finished the block. :(

Ran some more closed-dome Fabry-Perot tests.

Night Log 2014-12-25

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Stephen, Ana and Liam.

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Summary
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Clear night with patches of sub-arcsecond seeing. Unfortunately, temperatures steadily dropped and the relative humidity steadily rose, forcing us to close at midnight. It's <10C outside... and it's supposed to be summer!!! Brrrr! :(

Science data for:

2014-2-SCI-070 P0 RSS (Spectroscopic follow-up of type Ia supernovae discovered by DES to analyse their spectral properties)
2014-2-SCI-041 P1 RSS (Spectroscopy of star forming regions in the Magellanic Clouds)
2014-2-SCI-074 P1 SCAM (Observations of Dwarf Novae in the Large Magellanic Cloud)

Also took some tests with the Fabry-Perot etalons.

Night Log 2014-12-24

SA: Encarni
SO: Veronica
Others: Ana, Liam, Stephen and Mrs. Potter.

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Summary
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** Merry Christmas!!! ** Feliz Navidad!!! **

Beautiful, warm and clear Christmas Eve with decent seeing. Tried to spot Santa through the telescope, but we didn't manage. Hopefully he has been to our houses while we weren't looking and we got some presents waiting for us!! :)

Science data for:

2014-1-MLT-002 P1 RSS (Determining the fraction of Luminous Red Galaxies in merging pairs)
2014-2-SCI-047 P1 RSS (Study of the properties of thin and thick disks of galaxy IC2531)
2014-2-SCI-003 P1 RSS (Target of opportunity for variable AGN)
2014-2-SCI-040 P1 RSS (Superwinds in luminous starburst galaxies)