Weekly Checklist of Astronomers of Duty

This is page http://www.iram.es/IRAMES/mainWiki/AstronomerOfDutyChecklist maintained by CK. Intended Audience: IRAM staff astronomers

Schedules: AoDs, Operators, Projects

• At the begin of the AoD week:

  • Make yourself familiar with the present system status by reading the status page, previous reports, and by asking staff, in particular also Juan Penalver. Which backends are available ? Had there been receiver related problems lately ? When was the last pointing session ?

  • Check the observing schedule. If there are any TBD intervals, please contact Clemens Thum or the station manager to clarify their usage.

  • Do test observations after the Tuesday maintenance period (T00-09): Let the operators tune to the frequencies of the following project. Do a quick calibration and pointing. Connect some spectrometers (at least WILMA and VESPA), and do a quick position switched test observation (onoff). Use a strong line calibrators (e.g. from the Mauersberger catalogue) for this. Test the band combinations used by the next project. Check that Nasmyth offsets are correctly set. Beware that during one hour, only a brief test of the basic functionality can be done.

• During the week:
  • Speak with the observers and operators to check and discuss any problems. Do not hesitate to contact other staff.

  • Remind the observers to check the frequency tuning by observing a line calibrator with strong and known lines (e.g. DR21, W3OH, OriIrc2, etc.).

  • Get an idea of the pointing situation. How large are the observed offsets ? Are pointing & focus affected by anomalous refraction ?

  • Update the status page.

  • Take a look at the cable spiral, telescope tower, and receiver cabin at least once during the AoD week.

  • In case MAMBO2 is used: please check the dedicated MAMBO2 Checklist.

• The weekly report to be send at the end of each AoD week, should address the following topics. Please add eps files to your report, to better explain any problematic spectra, etc.. Better start writing the report already on the first day of the AoD week, and not at the very last moment. Report what is not working, but also changes to the positive. There is no need to repeat any daily operator reports. The report shall be send to aodreportlist AT iram.es .

  1. Pointing/Focus

  2. Receiver

  3. Backend

  4. Computers

  5. Software/Documentation

  6. Scheduled projects (T00, other technical projecxts (TT), Astronomy)

  7. Other remarks

• The above list assumes that you are familiar with the system:
  • Computers, Printers
  • Basic working of pako, odp/mira, class, greg
  • Basic security rules (Operators, Juan)
  • Observatory information for the guest observers
  • Basic IRAM web pages, wikis.

  • See the AoD Training Checklist maintained by Manolo

  • See the NCS Operations Notes maintained by Hans

  • To create the pointing and focus corrections distribution see: https://gra-lx1.iram.es/mainWiki/MopsicPointingMonitor and https://gra-lx1.iram.es/mainWiki/MopsicFocusMonitor maintained by Carsten and Robert