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

Contents

  1. Weekly Checklist of Astronomers of Duty
    1. News from 13-Jan-2012 CK
    2. At the beginning of the AoD week
    3. During the week
    4. Weekly report
    5. Quick Guide to the 30m
    6. Complaint form
    7. Appendix

News from 13-Jan-2012 CK

At the beginning of the AoD week

  1. 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 ?

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

  3. Please check with the observers whether they will use the FTS and with which dumping times. Please inform the computer group in case of dump times of less than 500msec.

  4. Do test observations near the end of the Tuesday maintenance period (T00-09): Ask operator to execute ./goOnce and ./go then let the operators tune to the frequencies of the following project. Do a quick calibration and pointing. Connect some spectrometers and do a quick position switched test observation (onoff). Use a strong line calibrator (e.g. from the Mauersberger catalogue) for this. Test the band combinations used by the next project. Beware that during one hour, only a brief test of the basic functionality can be done.

  5. Please also check with the local staff doing the weekly maintenance
    1. any changes made to the system which may affect observations, and

    2. whether it is possible to start the T00 test observations early on. If possible, i.e. if it fits with the maintenance work, the Astronomers of Duty should start testing as early as 3:30pm, using the setup of the next observing project.

During the week

  1. Communication: Speak with the observers and operators to check and discuss any problems. Do not hesitate to contact other staff. Do not hesitate to inform directly staff in Granada of any problems you may encounter. Please remind the observers to fill out the observer comment sheet, at the end of their run.

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

  3. Pointing: Get an idea of the pointing situation by speaking with the observers or checking TAPAS.

    • How large are the observed offsets ?

    • Are pointing & focus affected by anomalous refraction ?

    • In case of large pointing jumps:
      • If the jump is only in elevation, check that the relative humidity is read from the weather station. This is used to calculate the refraction correction. In case the humidity sensor is covered by ice and stuck at 100% humidity, the operators can use a handheld hygrometer and enter the value by hand in manual mode.

      • Check that the pointing constants p4/p5 do not show jumps here. These may indicate problems of the inclinometers.

    • Summarize the pointing situation in your AoD report. Do not only include only plots, but say whether or not there are problems. Remember that pointing offsets are not important, but their scatter. Attach a small selection of plots showing the pointing and focus corrections observed during the week by using TAPAS and the script developed by CB and NB -> HowToPointingPlot describes how to create use the script.

  4. Observatory: At least once per week, go up to the receiver cabin and take a careful look. Any strange noise ? Any water entering through the receiver cabin roof ?

  5. Dead times: Measure regularly the time it takes to start and execute a standard calibration. See the AoD report of CB of 10-Jan-2012.

    • select a source that is close to elevation 45 degrees (in the elevation range 30 to 60 degrees.), or just use the running observations for this test.
    • in pako enter:
      • CALIBRATE /DEFAULT
      • START
      • START
      • (or more starts if you have time)
    • ignore the times from the scan after the first START, because they may include additional overheads, e.g., to move the antenna to the start position

    • read the times from the displays of the messages, e.g., in the top center panel of https://mrt-lx1.iram.es/mrt/ncs/monitor/scanInfo.html or the bottom panel in the antennaDataStream viewer

    • for the time to start, record the time interval from the message "scan loaded" to the message "calSky started"
    • for the time to execute the scan, record the time from the message "calSky started" to the message "scan done"

  6. Status page: Update the status page.

  7. If the weather is poor and the telescope stays in stow position, please measure the stability of the receivers by following the HowToMeasureStabilities.

  8. Tests: Help the operators with the heterodyne tests while the telescope has to stay in stow position. These are described here.

Weekly report

Quick Guide to the 30m

Complaint form

Please encourage the visiting guest observers to speak out openly any complaints or to give suggestions on how we could improve. It is better they complain to us than to their colleagues at the home institute. If you hear a reasonable complaint (or have one yourself), please inform Juan Penalver, best by filling-out our complaint form. We will then take care that the issue is settled in a timely manner. (From the email of CK to the AoDs on 31-Jan-2012.)

Appendix