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03:00 - 09:00 Golshan: We were blessed with very stable weather, with tau varying around 0.2 and rms noise of array 2 in range 3-5 Jy/beam. After a calib1_scan [20211104s14] and beammap [20211104s15] on Uranus, I started observing NGC3521 and I could finish 13 repetitions of its script. I renewed the pointing every hour and corrected the focus once in the beginning and once in the middle of the shift. May the good weather continue! [It was reported that PIIC monitor for arrays 1 and 3 got stuck a couple of times, possibly due to a faulty scan. The problem was resolved by restarting the monitors. (IM)] 03:00 - 09:00 Golshan: We were blessed with very stable weather, with tau varying around 0.2 and rms noise of array 2 in range 3-5 Jy/beam. After a calib1_scan [20211104s14] and beammap [20211104s15] on Uranus, I started observing NGC3521 and I could finish 13 repetitions of its script. I renewed the pointing every hour and corrected the focus once in the beginning and once in the middle of the shift. May the good weather continue! [It was reported that PIIC monitor for arrays 1 and 3 got stuck a couple of times, possibly due to a faulty scan (header?). The problem was resolved by restarting the monitors. (IM)]

Daily Reports

Because of COVID-19, only IRAM staff is allowed to observe on-site until new notice.

Back to the NIKA2 Pool page

Nov 2nd, Tuesday

21:00 - 03:00 Angel, Ioannis: After weekly maintenance, telescope was parked due to bad weather conditions. Very high tau and variations fog building up around the telescope.

Nov 3rd, Wednesday

03:00 - 09:00 Ioannis: The bad weather conditions continued throughout the night with fog, strong winds and icy rain (!). Operator turned on the deicing mechanism to make sure that we can get back to observing conditions faster as the weather improves. [Note that it will take several hours for the telescope to relax after switching off de-icing. (CK)] Conditions are expected to improve later in the morning..

Some snapshots from this morning:
attachment:IMG_9373.jpg attachment:IMG_9374.jpg

09:00 - 15:00 Ioannis: Around 09:30 (UT) the weather conditions improved (tau ~0.26) and we started with the NIKA2 observations for the 2nd pool week. With the telescope at horizontal coordinates [140,40], the NIKA2 acquisition was initiated at the usual frequency (~24 Hz). The initial tuning of the resonances resulted in bad pixel numbers of 41/5/42 for Ar1/Ar2/Ar3, respectively. The noise traces were inspected and found to be very steep and dominated by the low frequencies, possibly due to the still unstable weather. No feature was found around 1 Hz, so there doesn't seem to be any issue with the PT. Then Mercury was used for initial pointing and focus. The baseline fluctuations were about 6-15 Jy/beam (rms) @ 2mm and about 30 Jy/beam (rms) @ 1mm. Beam size was 17.4" x 18.8" @ 2mm. With relatively stable baselines, a calib_1scan was performed on Mercury (scan 20211103s14) and a skydip (scan 20211103s11). Afterwards, start of observations for the DDT project E03-20. After pointing on 1226+023, we did 2 repetitions of the OTFmaps of the target source. Around 13:00 (UT) the weather conditions deteriorated, the beam broadened to about 19" @ 2mm and 13-14" @ 1mm and the baseline variations significantly increased (+/- 20 Jy/beam @ 2mm and +/- 40 Jy/beam at 1mm). Therefore, we continued with the time filler project 045-21 (during tau variations 0.3 - 0.5) until 14:30 (UT). At 13:55 (UT), "level 6: attente" was selected at the cryostat window, it was at "level 1: auto" until then.

15:00 - 21:00 Isabelle and Karine: Tau range is 0.2 - 0.3 at the beginning of the shift. The noise trace behavior is generally similar as the previous shift and the number of bad pixels are 58/4/58 for Ar1/Ar2/Ar3, respectively. After restarting the NIKA2 acquisition at ~48 Hz, observations for project 086-21 (ARSENAL) start. The opacity was better than the predictions. We did 2 repetitions on A2163 and 1 on A2218. Tau was < 0.3. Then we tried to do a skydip but the telescope control system failed. We experiences several stuck scans and all measurements in the scan range 79-89 should be discarded. The control system problem was resolved at 19:00 (UT) (~1hr lost), then focus and pointing. We switched to project 035-21 and observed 1 repetition on B335.

The sky is finally getting clearer:
attachment:IMG_9382.jpg

21:00 - 03:00 Philippe and Michael: Very good weather conditions (stable tau ~ 0.2 throughout the shift). Obtained several maps for project 018-21. Then did some calibrations (2 skydips [20211104s5 and 20211104s7], 1 calib_1scan [20211104s3] + 1beammap1scan99sub h [20211104s4] on Uranus) when the sources of 018-21 were too high in elevation. Finally, switched to project 007-21 and launched one set of maps (@mapping_1390_v2) for this project at the end of shift. [Had to re-launch the script after the scan got stuck once]

Nov 4th, Thursday

03:00 - 09:00 Golshan: We were blessed with very stable weather, with tau varying around 0.2 and rms noise of array 2 in range 3-5 Jy/beam. After a calib1_scan [20211104s14] and beammap [20211104s15] on Uranus, I started observing NGC3521 and I could finish 13 repetitions of its script. I renewed the pointing every hour and corrected the focus once in the beginning and once in the middle of the shift. May the good weather continue! [It was reported that PIIC monitor for arrays 1 and 3 got stuck a couple of times, possibly due to a faulty scan (header?). The problem was resolved by restarting the monitors. (IM)]

Nov 5th, Friday

Nov 6th, Saturday

Nov 7th, Sunday

Nov 8th, Monday

Nov 9th, Tuesday

DailyReportsNika2Pool021121 (last edited 2021-11-09 09:35:00 by NikaBolometer)