Daily Reports
Observers on-site: Francisco Montenegro, Sofia Savorgnano, Sihan Jiao, Samuel Leclercq, Hamza Ajeddig, Stergios Amarantidis (AoD) and Angel Bongiovanni (stayed only Tuesday).
Operators: Juan Luis (day shift) and Gloria (night shift)
Jan 14th, Tuesday
14:00-16:00: During the maintenance Dave and Samuel used the platform to access the external calibrator in the secondary mirror (ExtCal in M2) to check its connector. It was not fully plugged in! See picture below. It was very difficult to plug it all the way through, we don't why there was so much resistance, but eventually after shuffling a bit the back ring it went through. Now we have again a response on the ExtCal GUI, for the first time since the COSMOCal test in October. The problem occurred probably during the Holography campaign in November. We leave the ExtCal ON, with SetHeaterPower at 100. So in principle the data files should have now the ExtCal signal in addition to the sky signal, both in separate tables, and ExtCal signal not affecting sky signal. To be checked and discuss at the NIKA2 meeting tomorrow.
16:00-22:00: Stergios: Starting with POL mode and DAQ at ~15:00 UTC with 11/5/40 bad pixels. Starting with pointing/focus on NGC7027 but the tracking command does not behave correctly (the telescope doesn't move on target's direction). Scans 92, 93 (pointing command) appear on tapas but there are no imbfits files generated apart from the antenna files. AS and the computer group were contacted. We have lost x hours due to this technical issue. Excellent weather conditions (tau~0.1 and wind speed at ~3m/s).
Many spindle errors, basically impossible to observe (see for example s97 or s102; check tapas for more details). One stacked scan (s108).
Continuing with the calib_1scan of NGC7027, MWC349 and CRL2688.
Around 16:00 UTC we stopped for 15min due to high wind (see tracking errors below).
18:36 UTC: wind still high (gusts of ~10-12m/s), switching to Uranus and hopefully to the project 128-24. Uranus pointing and focus looks stable, wind decreasing so we move after calib1_scan to the project 128-24 at the source L1551-IRS5 around 19:20 UTC. After scan 134 there was a spindle error without the telescope observing anything. So far all spindle errors happened with relatively high wind and elevation above 50 deg. One repetition on this source (~1h) with one spindle error interfering with one of the maps. Spindle errors (scans 140, 145) and stacked scan (s141).
21:30-04:00: Samuel+Hamza: wind still a bit high (gusts of ~10-12m/s), but PIIC doesn't complain on tracking errors, tau225 ~ 0.1. Continue with project 128-24, source L1551-IRS5. Things went smoothly from s137 to s148, a spindle error during s149. Bellow a screenshot from IDL to see quick look polar of s137:
22:00 UTC restart acquisition because after the spindle error of scan 149, the IMBFITs were not created anymore, hopefully we can recreate from row data s150-154. s155 = 1st one after acquisition restart. s164 = redo s149. 22:48 UTC change project: calib in nikaw-24 on Uranus before going to project 015-17... but stop before observing it at 23:29 UTC because of too high wind. 01:50 UTC: Restarting observation by doing pointing and focus after the break. We repeated the track and focus because the track was not good and Uranus was at low elevation and one spindle as well.
We used the 0529+075 for pointing and focus because it is close to B-FUN source and Uranus is at low elevation. With a stable focus and good opacity, we run first round of NGC2024S at low elevation ! After NGC2020S is very low in elevation, we switched to GGC2264 after doing the pointing (did not repeat the focus as it was very stable all the night)> We observed GGC2264, but we could not finish the round as the source is going below 30 deg.
Jan 15th, Wednesday
04:00-10:00: Francisco: Small overlap with Hamza. Finishing up the B-FUN project with a skydip after the last science map.
03:15 UTC : skydip at the azimuth of the last scan. No automatic reduction showing up in PIIC. Wind going down a bit. A few gusts around 12 m/s 03:34 - 04:10 UTC : At 03:35 we got a spindle error but the scan was finished. Doing some calibration measurements on weakly polarized quasars as instructed by Stergios. Doing first 3C273 and then 3C386. Focusing before the first calib scan.
04:10 UTC: End of polarisation observations. Switching to total-power. Gloria goes to the telescope while it is slewing the full azimuth range. She sees that the polarizer is spinning. We cancel the tracking and she follows the procedure to stop the spinning grid and stops the NIKA software. Then she goes back to the telescope and removes the grid. Finally she restarts the NIKA software again.
04:50 UTC: Starting observations in total power. A pointing scan shows everything fine after the removal of the grid and the restart of the NIKA software. Afterwards, focusing becomes very difficult because of the higher winds resulting in relatively large tracking errors. We also got a spindler error that cancels one of the focus scans. After 1h or so, I manage to get a full focus scan and apply the correction. Then I switch to the science project.
05:58 UTC: Pointing scan on a closeby source to the target. Then repeating one of the scans with tracking errors from last night (4/4). After that, a full loop is executed with all 4 angles.
10:00-16:00: Sofia:
16:00-22:00: Sihan:
22:00-04:00: Samuel+Hamza:
Jan 16th, Thursday
04:00-10:00: Francisco:
10:00-16:00: Sofia:
16:00-22:00: Sihan:
22:00-04:00: Samuel+Hamza:
Jan 17th, Friday
04:00-10:00: Francisco:
10:00-16:00: Sofia:
16:00-22:00: Sihan:
22:00-04:00: Samuel+Hamza:
Jan 18th, Saturday
04:00-10:00: Francisco:
10:00-16:00: Sofia:
16:00-22:00: Sihan:
22:00-04:00: Samuel+Hamza:
Jan 19th, Sunday
04:00-10:00: Francisco:
10:00-16:00: Sofia:
16:00-22:00: Sihan:
22:00-04:00: Samuel+Hamza:
Jan 20th, Monday
04:00-10:00: Francisco:
10:00-16:00: Sofia:
16:00-22:00: Sihan:
22:00-04:00: Samuel+Hamza:
Jan 21st, Tuesday
04:00-10:00: Francisco:
!End of week!