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Daily Reports (2026/02/17-24, NIKA2 run 79, Cryo run 91)

Observers on-site: Sunayana Bhargava, Andrés Zuleta, Vito Aberham, Miren Muñoz (until Friday), Albrecht Sievers (from Friday on)

Astronomer on Duty: Ioannis Myserlis (and Miren Muñoz on AoD training)
Pool Manager: Angel Bongiovanni

Operators: Joaquín Santiago (night), Sergio Amaya (day)

Organization of shifts:
21:00-03:00 LT: Sunayana Bhargava
03:00-09:00 LT: Miren Muñoz / Albrecht Sievers
09:00:15:00 UT: Andrés Zuleta
15:00-21:00 UT: Vito Aberham

Important

Focus offsets shall be measured on Ar1
Pointing offsets shall be measured on Ar2

Pool-Account usage: Accounting of observing times

• Calibration observations like pointing, focus, and calib_1scan (the latter in case of NIKA2-Pol only, aimed at characterizing the instrumental polarization) which are conducted before and during project observations are part of the project time. Note that all proposals include such overheads in the time and sensitivity estimates. This holds for total power and polarimetry observations.

• Other calibration observations which are important for all projects like beam maps, skydips, or calib_1scan for absolute flux calibration may be accounted under the pool account (nikaX-YY, where X = s,w and YY = year ; nikaw-25 in this case).

• When conditions are unstable and it is unclear whether project observations make sense at all, calibrations may be accounted to the pool account.

Focus and Beam maps accounting

Please fill the Table with the Ar1,2,3 focus values as follows. At best, make one table per day.

• Focus sequences (NOTE: Ar2 is very noisy and this might influence the A2 focus value)
  Scans nr.	Target	Ar2	Ar1	Ar3	Pol?	Notes
  20260217s127-131	Uranus	?	0.45	0.98	Y	started focus @ 0.25mm

Similarly, if any beam maps (total power or polarimetry) are taken:

• Beam maps
  Scan Nr	Target	Focus	TP (99 subscans) or Pol (95 subscans)	Notes

Tuesday, 17th February 2026

10:30-15:30: All observers arrived safely at the telescope. Weather prediction looks amazing for the week and we are all excited to make progress with the NIKA2 pool projects! Maintenance time.

15:30-21:00 all: Starting with NIKA2-Pol observations, project 084-25. Tuning good with 11/5/11 bad kids (Ar1/2/3). Pointing, focus and calib_1scan (20260217s133, for IP) on Uranus. Focus difference between Ar1 and Ar3 seems to be increased to about 0.55mm. Let's see how it evolves this week. 1 rep on G139.9091 .

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