Daily reports, NIKA2 pool week #4, Winter 2024-25 semester
First week of the NIKA2 run 71 (Cryo run 83).
This time, 8 days, starting on Monday, instead of 7 starting on Tuesday. Change of plans: we will go up to the Observatory on Tuesday as usual, hence 7 days.
Observers on-site: Philippe André, Helena Mazurek, Chiara Mininni, Ioannis Myserlis (AoD), Monica Rodriguez, Ste B. (AoD)
Operators: Kike and Frederic
NOTE by SB: if possible, please take some total power beam maps (Uranus at best); and some pol beam maps on Uranus too.
Note by CK: During the holography run last week, several panel frames of the primary have been adjusted. Uranus observations were conducted on 10/11 Feb with EMIR. Telescope efficiencies may well have changed (slightly improved).
Feb 10th, Monday
The plan has changed. Spindle nr 6 is being replaced today and the operation will take until tomorrow, end of maintenance. Therefore the observations will start tomorrow.
Update on the Spindles work: yesterday the wind was rising, hence there's not been time to change the spindle motor. All electric connectors have been checked and few were found loose and have been fixed. The sub-reflector was mounted back in place. Few hours of EMIR observations were carried out as a test. During these few hours, three Spindle errors occurred.
Feb 11th, Tuesday
Chiara, Helena, Ioannis, Philippe, Stefano and maaaany others arrived to the telescope.
During maintenance, we prepare the NIKA2 setup: we open the VNC, start XEphem, start the PIIC monitors, start the make-imbfits (old). We test the rotation of the HWP: all works fine.
16:00-21:00 LT: Chiara + Helena + Stefano: wind, the telescope is parked. Training the new observers about how to read the PIIC monitor, fill Tapas, fill the Daily report, and everything they've ever wanted to know about what we are going to do when the wind will give us a break.
21:00-03:00 LT: Helena + Stefano; wind and snow -> telescope parked
Feb 12th, Wednesday
03:00-09:00 LT: Ioannis; I start the observed around 5 a.m. LT. Progress of the morning:
- setting all up and waiting for the de-icing to switch off
- NIKA2 tuning fine with only 25/3/30 bad KIDs
- pointing and focus on 1226+023. conditions still a bit unstable (atmospheric variations at +/- 10 Jy/beam)
- after a while conditions become acceptable and start with projects
- 189-24, one repetition of source CTRS27
07:30 UT: SB: The new make imbf is writing data in a new directory /imbfits, but we don't have permission to read it! GRRRRRR. Hence since the start at 04:00 UT, we are using the imbf produced by the old make-imbf. So far it has been ok, but now we are losing time like in the "good old days". This should not happen. If the system/setup is changed, it should work properly. We write to the IT group to fix this issue.
07:40 UT: we switch to NIKA-Pol. SB realizes that the leveling of the cryostat was not on level: attente. Be careful with the data taken until now.
- 08:00 UT: While waiting for the data access to be fixed we decide to copy by hand the new scans produced by the new make-imbf in the directory that was used until last time. It is surely faster than waiting for the old make-imbf to write the files. We now have three versions/repositories.
- 08:20 UT: we now have access to the new data directory.
09:00-16:15 LT: Philippe + Chiara and Helena from 15:00 on.
- after initiating NIKA2-Pol, we do pointing and focus on 2200+420 (BL-Lac), as well as calib_1scan (20250212s44)
- 157-24, one repetition of Sgr-B2
- calib_1scan on BL-Lac (2200+420)
- 145-24, one repetition of G16.59, followed by calib_1scan on 3C454 (2251+158)
- 145-24 notes: scan 60 was cancelled for a spindle error (17 minutes lost; this scan does not appear in Tapas; we don't know why, maybe the Antenna-imbf is missing?); also scan 64 was affected by a spindle error and was interrupted (5 minutes lost, it is recorded in Tapas).
- calibrations (MWC349, NGC7027, CRL2688)
- 135-24, one repetition of G75.78 (we had nine spindle/homology errors; but, luckily, only 15 minutes of science scans lost in total)
16:15-22:00 LT: Ioannis + Chiara: special observations, under project T14-24, using a quarter wave plate (QWP) in front of the NIKA2 rotating HWP. This experiment allows to detect circular polarization with NIKA2! It is combined with X-POL observations of the same targets. SMA 1mm observations were also carried out this morning / last night.
- observation of the six targets with the standard NIKA2-Pol
- installation of the QWP at 0 deg orientation, in front of the HWP
- observation of four targets with the QWP at 0 deg.
- rotation of the QWP to 45 deg and observation of these four targets
- observations with X-POL of the four targets
- removal of the QWP
22:00-03:00 LT: Helena + Stefano
- we start NIKA2 again, in total power; lost KIDs: 24/2/37
- Uranus calib_1scan
- 113-24, 3 maps of Orion-B (2 spindle errors; 4 scans cancelled, 16 minutes lost in scans).
- skydip (scan s202)
- 114-24, ... reps of map 1, ... reps of map 2, ... reps of map ...
Between 12/2 @5:00 a.m. and 13/2 @03:00 a.m. (LT), we had ... spindle/homology errors, totaling at least ... cancelled scans. SB will not continue to keep track of each single lost scan every day. It was only for today. See Tapas for the next days. The total time lost in science scans, today was:
- 145-24: 22 minutes
- 135-24: 15 minutes
- 113-24: 16 minutes
Feb 13th, Thursday
03:00-09:00 LT: Ioannis + Stefano (up to 4 a.m.). We continue the total power observations
Feb 14th, Friday
Feb 15th, Saturday
Feb 16th, Sunday
Feb 17th, Monday