Daily Reports
Contents
Jan 10th, Monday
~19:00-22:00; Angel: we took advantage of technical time (T06-21) yielded by Manuel Castillo for NIKA2 general checks and calibrations. Acquisition restarted at ~19:10 after cooling down checks by Dave John and Santiago Navarro. Tau(225 GHz) about 0.25, and quite a stable atmosphere with baseline variations between 1 and 3 Jy/beam (2 mm) during this special shift. After checking the right imbfits file creation, we pointed and focused on Uranus. We got FWHMs 17.2"x17.8" (2 mm); 11.0"x11.6" (1 mm); the antenna seems to be a bit unrelaxed according to the maps. Meanwhile, we checked pointing corrections in the ~150 < Az. < 300 deg and ~20 < El. < 65 deg. ranges. Mean corrections from 11 pointing scans are 6.37" (rms 1.17") in Az. and 2.55" (rms 2.38") in El. according to a report of Robert Zylka. For focus we got -0.6 +/- 0.6 mm (stable and close to the expected values after the intervention of PT100 sensors by Salvador Sánchez in the afternoon). Pointing and focus correction on NGC7027. A set of calib_1scan maps were obtained on that source (20220110s181), MWC349 (s182), and CRL2688 (s183). Very stable at the end of the shift. Coming back to Uranus. Resonances were reworked before pointing and a new focus correction. Beam map (h option) on Uranus (s198).
After cooling down, the traces of arr1 showed correlated spikes at ~3, 6, and 9 Hz of unknown origin (a screen-shot below). Dave performed some tests and checked electronics and pre-amplifiers, but without qualitative changes. Possible effects on the maps should be investigated. The behaviour of the other arrays looks fine.
Jan 11th, Tuesday
[AB] Provisional note: The parameters of a pointing model based on the idem session of early December will be installed by Manuel asap. On the other hand, during the maintenance slot, the telescope engineers have checked in deep the temperature sensors of the antenna back-structure. In the past week, the automatic compensation of temperature gradients was turned off several days due to sensor bad readings and the observers had to increase the frequency of pointing and focus corrections (see the AoD report of Gabriel Paubert). In principle, the system should work appropriately. Otherwise, I will ask you for increasing the frequency of such corrections. We'll be pending on this issue.
16:00-21:00; Angel, Matt: After initial calibrations started observing IMEGIN targe NGC(160-16) with tau borderline ~0.25. Calib_1 scan of Uranus was completed (168), and returned to IMEGIN, however tau went above criteria of 0.25. Switched to project 137-21 but atmospheric stability declined so waited for 30 mins. The atmosphere became more stable, another calib_1 scan of NGC7027 was taken before starting project 137-21 with tau~0.28.
20:45-03:00; Alex : continuing on 137-21 / WB89-380 - WB89-399 - WB89-437 ; nikaw-21 / @skydip (2022011s203) + focus on 0355+508 ; switching to 192-16 / COSMOS (2 rounds). Time between the end of '@nkpoint f' and the start of PIIC processing: 1min46s, 1min 54, 2min, 4min 16, 31s, 1min14, 5min49.
Jan 12th, Wednesday
03:00 - 05:00; Emmanuel, Juan, Corentin : Tau(225 GHz) between ~0.20 and 0.25 and very stable, during the first hour we did one pointing on 1156+285 and we launched a scan of PSZ2-G228 but an electronic issue came up with the second matrix --> impossible to proceed the observations. Last scans (20220112s25 and s26) likely corrupted.
05:20 - 10:45; Frédéric, Angel: Switching to EMIR backup project 170-21. Targets observed: 38659-low (lines detected after 3 reps.); 54706-low (lines detected after 2 reps.); 53609-low (lines detected, 3 reps.). Arr2 crate issue fixed by Dave John after restarting the corresponding crate by software. Acquisition/imbfits creation restarted after that. Very large (~25"!) pointing corrections after first attempts. Inclinometers updated. Right positioning of the mirrors checked. Wobbler system deactivation verified. Expected pointing corrections recovered. So, scans 20220112s69 to s79 are useless. Karyne Demyk took over at 10:45.
10:45 - 15:00; Karine: Instrument retuned at the beginning of the shift. Focus on Mars, a calib_1scan (2022012s86), and a skydip (s87) at the beginning of the shift. Then I switched to project 109-21 for the rest of the shift and did 2 Reps on B68 then 2 Reps on L694. Tau was about 0.11, then up to 0.13-0.15 with some variations.
15:00 - 21:00; Matt: Initial calibrations on 0234+285, tau ~0.125 although light snow outside, and atmospheric stability was good. Moved on to NGC628, first obs tau between 0.10 and 0.16, dropped to 0.04 at the end. Did a second obs of NGC628 where tau increased to ~0.2 by the end but still good stability. Two calib_1 scans were then performed one of CRL618 (20220112s165), and one of Uranus (s168) with tau~0.08. Then switched to GASTON, three observations in total (B211 and B213), excellent atmosphere stability < 0.5 Jy/beam, and tau~0.08.
21:00 - 03:00; Guilaine: Finishing a GASTON map for 30 minutes. Manual tuning of NIKA2 after that. Then a hard sequence of focus/pointing despite the wonderful tau (<0.1): Bad beams (too large, 14-15” at the start at 1.2mm) and pointing corrections too large (up to 10”). It ends up that it was snow on the dish. Converging for 22h30 UT. Then, smooth sequence of calibration on Uranus (calib_1scan, beammap and skypdip: scans 20220112s220 to s222). And 3 repets. on N2CLS COSMOS. I’d suggest to the GASTON team to check their data, at least the last map.
Jan 13th, Thursday
03:00 - 09:00; Miren, Corentin : Tau(225 GHz) very stable ~0.08. Switching to LPSZ 199-16 project. Focus with 1226+023. After several pointings, we did 2 reps on PSZ2-G228 and a skydip (20220113s38). Finally, we did several focuses with 1226+023 and pointing every 2 reps in order to do 4 reps on PSZ2G212 (17/26) and the last 2 reps on PSZ2-G228 (8/8). We wanted to do a calibration one scan with MWC349 but it was too low. Some pointings were a bit awkward (a bit elongated beams).
09:00 - 15:00; Karine: Instrument retuned at the beginning of the shift. I started on project 109-21 with 2 Reps on L694. Then on nikaw-21 account, I did a pointing/focus on MCW389 (the one on K3-50A was not good) then a calib_1scan on MCW389, CRL2688, and K3-50A, then a skydip (scans 20220113s108 to s111). I switched back to project 109-21 and did 3 Reps on B68 and 1.5 Rep on L694. Tau was excellent and stable during all the shifts (~0.08-0.1) although the beam size has slowly deteriorated with time. Please note that the calib_1scan on Mars (scan s127) has been done on the 109-21 project account. In addition, I did a couple of focuses trying to get a better beam on the project account. I let you decide if they should all count on the project time! Thanks.
15:00 - 21:00; Matt: Start of the shift tau ~0.11, initial calibrations and then onto project 160-16, starting observation NGC628 for IMEGIN. Then switched to project 110-2 NGC1333-C7 1 rep, followed by 1 rep C2, however noticed atmosphere variations were getting worse (even though tau was good) so went over to Uranus to obtain a calib_1scan (scan number 181), followed by skydip, but the atmosphere still continued to have large 10 Jy/beam variations. We therefore switched to GASTON due to poor sky stability but great tau, repeating B211_213 three times. Atmosphere stabilised (probably due to sunset), variations down at ~2.5 Jy/beam at end of shift. In the middle of the GASTON observations did a calib_1scan on CRL618 (scan id: 200).
21:00 - 03:00; Alexandre: Manual tuning of the instrument by Angel, switch to nikaw-21 for a pointing and focus on 0224+671, Observed WB89-391 of project 137-21, swith to nikaw-21, pointing / focus / beammap (scan 233) / calib_1scan (scan 234) on Uranus, switch to 110-21 1 rep on NGC1333-C2, after waiting more than 8min at tau ~ 0.079 to get the pointing correction... switch to 192-16 COSMOS 3 reps. Time between end of scan and start of PIIC processing for pointing or focus scans : 04:26, 00:56, 00:39 00:59 00:45 00:54 02:08 00:56 00:48 00:44 00:52 00:40 08:32 02:44 05:46 05:41
03:00 - 09:00: Laurence: Last repetition and pointing for project 192-16 completed at about 2:20. Move on to 199-16 project. Last focus was a couple of hours ago: checking focus: very small drift. Observing PSZ1G226, PSZ2-G211, PSZ2-G212 and PSZ2-G160 in turn. Preparing smooth take over for next observer in the last 30 minutes
Jan 14th, Friday
Jan 15th, Saturday
Jan 16th, Sunday
Jan 17th, Monday