Back to the NIKA2 main page

Daily Reports

Oct 11th, Tuesday

16:30-21:00; Angel: Rainy and foggy after the weekly maintenance. Slight snowfall. The atmosphere was quite unstable after that, but mean tau has continuously dropped; still being unstable. Preparing setup for NIKA2.

21:00-03:00; Stergios, Angel: Unfortunately, tau raised above 1 at the beginning of the shift; still being unstable. At ~02h tau dropped up to ~0.7, with clear signs of relative atmospheric stability. DAQ of NIKA2 was started at 02:30 using the run72_tp_old_sweep.ini file ('old sweep': see Monday's report: https://publicwiki.iram.es/DailyReportsNika2Pool101022) as run72.ini file in order to check the instrument, main scripts, and quick data reduction before the science observations. Best of resonances (on-sky) gave the following bad/total KIDs relations: 138/1055 (Ar1), 123/573 (Ar2), 88/1056 (Ar3).

Oct 12th, Wednesday

03:00-09:00; Quang, Stergios, Angel: We carried out some tests with NIKA2, starting with a small pointing session (110 < Az. < 305 deg., 32 < El < 71 deg.) after a good focus. Pointing corrections, averages and rms are given in the table below.

A couple of calib_1scans on Uranus was obtained (20221012s20 and s42), as well as a skydip (s32). Atmosphere instabilities increased gradually during this test session. Regarding telescope and instrument, everything seems to be ready for starting the observations. At 05:50 we switched to EMIR. At about 06h and up to the end of the shift, Quang observed on behalf of the EMIR backup project 051-22. The tau from taumeter fluctuated a lot from 0.6 to 1.7. Tau at ~100 GHz from MRTCAL was stable: ~0.1.

09:00-15:00; Matthieu (on hold), Angel: Mean opacity was about 0.6 and 1.2 over the shift. Project D02-22 was observed with EMIR-E0 (6 reps. on LH206718 and 4 reps. on LH93597). Noncompatible opacity for EMIR-EO observations (Wsw) after ~12:45. We parked the telescope at ~13:00. Dense fog and light rain after that.

15:00-21:00; Gianluca (on hold): Bad weather, telescope stopped.

21:00-03:00; Angel: Opacity dropping to ~0.7, relatively stable. Continuing with EMIR backup programs, waiting for a qualitative improvement. Starting observations with 1 rep. on field C3, setup 1, project 018-22. Tuning with setup 2. One rep. on the fields C1, C2, and C3. Mean tau_225GHz was about 0.75 with some noticeable spikes, despite tau at ~100 GHz from MRTCAL being < 0.25 (=> pwv < 8 mm in the line of sight). Switching to project 043-22 at ~02:30 for observing the pre-stellar core L1544.

Oct 13th, Thursday

03:00-09:00; Quang: Today, as part of the NIKA2 pool, I observed project 043-22 using EMIR. The tau from taumeter was quite good for that: 0.5 to 0.8.

09:00-15:00; Guilaine: Observing with EMIR project 083-22. Do first pointing/focus on Mars, then pointing on a source close to the target. Observing source 8556-high, problem with the wobbler system, scan 176 canceled. Then do 8 repetitions. Focus on 0923+392. Observing source 18857-high, 3 repetitions, pointing with oscillations (due to anomalous refraction?) PWV is also rising, reaching 7mm. Scan 322 canceled and stop at 12:25UT.

15:00-21:00; Gianluca: Observing with EMIR between 6:00PM to 8:00PM CET (project 019-22). Between 8:00PM-9:30PM we moved to project 083-22, but weather conditions were unstable after pointing+focus, and we stopped the observations.

21:00-03:00; Stefano + Angel: the sky improved. We switch to NIKA2. Tuning OK. Starting pointing/focus; peak to peak sky along the timeline +/- 2 Jy at 2 mm. Tau(225) drops to ~0.2. We start 199-16 and observe 2 repetitions of PSZ1G080.

Oct 14th, Friday

Oct 15th, Saturday

Oct 16th, Sunday

Oct 17th, Monday

Oct 18th, Tuesday