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Daily Reports

January 15, (Tuesday)

Andrew, Charlène, Florian, Alexandre and Bilal at the telescope

After a rough start, trying to do calibration measurements, we start with science with exciting news! A GRB was detected 24 hours ago and director's allowed for one hour to be observed with NIKA2.

Night Shift, A. Beelen, F. Kéruzoré

Started at 21 UT. We wanted to observe for 122-18 but the source was too high, so we decided to do some calibration : pointing, beammap, pointing and focus on 3C84.

22:30 : we switched to 122-18 : pointing on 0333+321, and then observed L1498 for ~1h30min.

00:00 : we switched to 192-16 : pointing on 0823+033, and then observed COSMOS for ~1h.

01:00 : we lost the I electronic box in the A1 matrix, and had to retune the KIDs. After that, pointing on 1044+719, and observed Goodsnorth for ~1hfor 199-16.

02:30 : pointing and focus on 1803+784. Focus is close to what we had previously.

02:45 : we switched to 199-16 : pointing on 1418+546 and observe PSZ2G094 for ~50 min.

03:30 : tau climbing up >0.3 and unstable => switch to 209-18 : pointing on 0836+710, and observed MS0735 until the end of the shift at 05:00.

January 16, (Wednesday)

Morning Shift, A. Rigby, C. Lefèvre

We take over with a stable tau ~0.35, and after a pointing, skydip and focus, we start observing project 184-18. This project has many sources close to the zenith, so we start observing the group of galaxies at ~50 degrees elevation. JINGLE73 is the first galaxy up. Tau stayed close to 0.3 for the majority of our time observing JINGLE73. Shortly after sunrise, we complete a pointing and focus before heading to JINGLE180. We finish observing this project JINGLE77 in good conditions for this project, at tau~0.25. We moved to 128-18 for a while, with tau~0.25. We finish observing with DRSer for project 176-18.

Afternoon Shift, B. Ladjelate

After 2PM I started tests with acquisition V3 with every kind of scans we can do, on 2251+158, Uranus, Neptune and Mars.

Back to V1, we then continue with beammap on Neptune and secondary calibrator. While the opacity is showing spikes, it remains stable around 0.3, and the focus values remain unchanged.

For a few hours everything was fine and we could observe project 176-18 BUT

We don't talk anymore, like we used to doooo...

VAC1 crashed around 7PM and could not be recovered, along mrt-lx1 and 3. This situation, that occurred before when using DAQ V3, is still ongoing at 21h30. Here we used DAQ V3 but not anymore. Once VAC1 recovered, the antennadatastream and PaKo could not communicate with the antenna. Everything was checked like the event of the 4-5 December 2018. Pablo Mellado onsite, Albrecht Sievers and Francesco Pierfederici in remote are helping with the various problems arising.

After 7 hours trying to ressuscitate the antenna, trying everything that is on hand, multiple times, we stop any attempts. Juan-Luis will try again during the night, but there is not much hope. With everyone awake, we might find a solution no one thought about.

Observers have been notified of the schedule for the rest of the night and tomorrow morning, and will wake up the AoD in case there is any miracle during night.

3AM: The 8th hour was the right hour. The antenna system pulled a "Lazarus" and finally the encoders synchronized. Observations will restart with the LPSZ & the LPDF in excellent weather conditions...and improving!

Night Shift, A. Beelen, F. Kéruzoré

We started observing at 02:00 UT. We began with a pointing and a focus on 3C84, and ran a skydip. We had a hard time getting a good pointing, so we refocused, and were able to start science observations.

03:00 UT : start observing COSMOS for 192-16.

04:00 UT : start a series of catastrophic pointings. We end up with a good one on 1641+399, and get a good focus on it. Unfortunately, we forgot to change project to nikaw-18, which makes it all counted as 192-16 time...

04:45 UT : start observing PSZ2G094 for 199-16. tau is still very good, stable at ~0.13 and slowly decreasing.

January 17, (Thursday)

Morning Shift, A. Rigby, C. Lefèvre

Tau stabilizes to 0.13 for a while!

05h UT: 199-16 LP SZ 2 more loops with a pointing in between (good beam)

06h UT: 192-16 1 loop on GOODS-NORTH

07h UT: do pointing close to GP-L1498, focus then switch to GASTON-L1498

07h40 UT: start observations of 192-16 - do a pointing that looks ok (08h50 UT) Stopped after 3 repeats excellent data

11h32 UT: try 128-18 but pointing was bad - only successful on strong source far away from the project

Afternoon Shift, B. Ladjelate

No luck, we started observing 159-18, and after a while we realized that the weather was getting worse.

Night Shift, A. Beelen, F. Kéruzoré

We kept observing the GRB until 22:00 UT.

We ran a pointing, focus and beammap on 3C84.

At 00:00 UT, we started observing COSMOS for 192-16, and then Goodsnorth at ~1:30.

At ~02:50 UT, we started observing PSZ2G094 for 199-16.

January 18, (Friday)

Morning Shift, A. Rigby, C. Lefèvre

05:00 UT - As we take over, tau is ~0.25 and fairly stable, and we continue observing PSZ2G094 for 199-16.

06:30 UT - we take a pointing, focus, and a skydip before moving to project 128-18 to resume observations L183-SOUTH1.

08:15 UT - Weather conditions are slowly improving (tau~0.18), and we change target to L134-NIKA2-1.

10:30 UT - After a pointing and focus, we switch to GASTON (122-16) for observations of the Galactic Plane field.

Afternoon, B. Ladjelate

We start with project 159-18, to continue later with calibration scans. The weather starts to act up and we stop observations around 5PM

Night Shift, A. Beelen, F. Kéruzoré

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

January 19, Saturday

Morning Shift, A. Rigby, C. Lefèvre

07h UT: start back observations - call Bilal for tuning - pointing on 3C345

08h UT: atmosphere is not good - we got only large positive values for focus!

• Trying to catch some sources from Planck flux catalog

09h UT: one scan with missing blocs, keep doing flux measurements and try to point and focus all morning long but bad atmosphere

Afternoon Shift, B. Ladjelate

2PM, we will slowly start EMIR observations. The weather is too poor for NIKA2, and the KIDS are very unstable because of the atmosphere

Well now it's snowing as I start the pointing which was bad anyway. So Salvador Sanchez will take over to perform VLBI phase and frequency tests.

Night Shift, A. Beelen, F. Kéruzoré

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

January 20, Sunday

Morning Shift, A. Rigby, C. Lefèvre

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Afternoon, B. Ladjelate

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Night Shift, A. Beelen, F. Kéruzoré

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January 21, Monday

Morning Shift, A. Rigby, C. Lefèvre

Stopped because of wind

Afternoon, B. Ladjelate

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Night Shift, A. Beelen, F. Kéruzoré

00:00 UT : wind died down ! Start with a pointing and a focus.