Daily Reports
Contents
Jan 18th, Tuesday
16:00-21:00; Ioannis: System check begins directly after maintenance around 16:30. NIKA2 acquisition is restarted. After few trials we get a good tuning with 42/5/48 dead kids for Arr1/Arr2/Arr3. The correlated noise in the traces of Arr1 is still visible at 2.6, 5.5 and 8 Hz. We start with very good weather conditions (tau225 ~ 0.15 and baseline variations of 0.5-1 Jy/beam at 2mm) and do pointing and focus on Uranus (beam size 17.7" at 2mm and best focus -1.3mm). Manuel adjusts parameters P2 and P7 of the pointing model and I start a short pointing session with 16 sources that cover an azimuth range of 120-289 degrees and elevation range of 10-73 degrees. The results yield an azimuth correction of 1.81" +/- 1.99" and an elevation correction of -6.29" +/- 1.28". Given the large offset from (0,0) we readjust parameter P2 and run a second short pointing session with 11 sources that cover an azimuth range of 120-283 degrees and elevation range of 27-70 degrees. The final results yield an azimuth correction of 1.13" +/- 0.99" and an elevation correction of 0.47" +/- 1.56" and we decide to keep this settings for the ongoing pool week. The shift is finished with a retuning of NIKA2 in preparation for the night shifts. After few trials we get a good tuning with 38/8/48 dead kids for Arr1/Arr2/Arr3. Throughout the shift tau225 was below 0.2 and the baseline stability was between 0.3 and 4 Jy/beam at 2mm.
21:00-03:00; Matthieu: The night started by calibration on Uranus (pointing, focus, calib1_scan [20220118s193], beammap [20220118s194]) and then a skydip [20220118s195]. Then, WB89-789 (137-21) was observed. The operator (Sergio) mentioned a problem with an antenna temperature control. I redid a focus and it was off by almost 2mm. We managed to get a good focus and started to observe COSMOS (192-16). I did a control pointing and realize that the beam was VERY bad (40 arcsec). The operator then changed the temperature control mode. Around 1h30, I redid a focus (hard to find since it moved again a lot) and started to observe COSMOS. I redid a focus and pointing after 30 min and it did not drift too much. I then started a 1h integration on COSMOS to finish the shift. The weather was excellent (tau~0.15). So, it was very unfortunate to have these technical problems, but Sergio was super efficient to fix it.
Jan 19th, Wednesday
03:00-09:00; Stavroula: I tried to focus the telescope every hour in order to avoid beam distortions. After 1 hour, beam was going towards 20" @2mm and after focusing was dropping at 17.5". NIKA2 tuning done by Ioannis at the end of the shift [IM: good tuning after a few trials with 45/7/57 dead kids for Arr1/Arr2/Arr3]. Besides that, sky conditions were great: tau pretty stable to 0.17-0.18, sky fluctuations between +/- 2Jy/beam for the most of the shift. Concerning the observations: After the end of COSMOS repetition (192-16), I observed the project 160-16: 88min on NGC4321 (currently considered as complete), 87min on NGC3184, 20min on NGC3938. One skydip done roughly at the mid of the shift [20220119s49].
09:00-15:00; Miren & Aishwarya: Opacity was very stable at ~0.18 during the whole shift. However, due to the temperature control problem we had to check pointing and focus very frequently [IM: every 1hr or less]. We started with two repetitions on PSZ2G094 (199-16) and after focus observations were paused for restarting the automatic temperature control [IM: the system is monitored and if any more issues appear we will tackle them on the spot]. Then we observed PSZ2G091 for one repetition (199-16). Switched to 109-21 project and after pointing did 2 reps on L694 (35 and 36/50). Beam was relatively stable, except towards the end of the shift, when it was broader in azimuth (~ 17 x 20 at 2mm). We repeated pointing and focus to improve the beam at the end of the shift.
Jan 20th, Thursday
Jan 21st, Friday
Jan 22nd, Saturday
Jan 23rd, Sunday
Jan 24th, Monday