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Daily Reports

Observers on-site: Michael Mattern, Marie-Anne Carpine, Paul Law, Carsten Kramer and Stergios Amarantidis (AoD).

Operators: Gloria (day), Sergio (night).

All times are in Local Time.

Feb 18th, Tuesday

Maintenance: during maintenance CD fixed E1 (apparently the issue was found) and we conducted some tests with E0,1,2,3 (just tuning in some corresponding frequencies for each band).

15:00-22:00: Stergios: Basic training on NIKA2/EMIR observations. 15:00 LT: Wind gusts up to 20m/s thus we wait a couple of minutes for the weather to improve. At 16:21 LT we started with tuning with EMIR to project 143-24. Spindle errors and homology at scan 18, 19, 20, 21 (good start...). Manuel and Gloria think that this is caused as side effect after working on the emergency switch. Reset solves this problem. Trying with the 143-24 project. It doesn't work (either a focus observation). JT was contacted, the operator restarted odp but still plots are not created. The chopper was the culprit as it had been left in manual mode, we repeat a pointing test to see if we get the data and it works! Moving ahead with the observations.

Marie-Anne: Observing 143-24, mediocre conditions, we did calibrations on uranus, mars and 0458-020. We are observing NGC1977, map 4 vert. and then maps 1 to 4 horizontal. Spindle error but no scan lost (when changing project to test). Continuing with NGC1977 - project 143-24 (using the source 0430+052 for pointing; brightest source nearby) completing a forth repetition on the vertical maps. The weather though is quite unstable...

22:00-04:00: Carsten: Switching to 186-24. 1spindle error at the start. Weather instable, tau225 fluctuating around ~0.4 with clouds moving through. Pointing on 0851+202 showing quite some instabilities. Switching to test and trying Mars. Pointing stable on Mars and on 0851+202. Focus ok. 22h25: Start of wsw observation of J0956+3625, which still needs 3.5h. Scan 143 interrupted by spindle error at 23:34. One wind alarm during scan 145: 20m/s peak. Wind increasing with average values of ~10m/s. Scan 153, wind peaks at 20m/s, tracking errors reach 3". Pointed wobbler switched observations at elevations up to 84.0deg. Wind peaks reach 21m/s -- too high. Stop at 00:45. Start again at 1:15. 89deg elev is too high - cancelled. Pointing/Focus on Mars. Start at ~86deg elevation. Wind still high. 03:13 all loops on J0956+3625 completed. Next: J1147+3501.

Feb 19th, Wednesday

04:00-10:00: Michael:continue with 186-24 on source J1147+3501. Wind is still high but within the limits. Spindel error at 04:04. Wind is decreasing, no 3" warnings after 04:50

10:00-16:00: Paul:

16:00-22:00: Marie-Anne:

22:00-04:00: Carsten:

Feb 20th, Thursday

04:00-10:00: Michael:

10:00-16:00: Paul:

16:00-22:00: Marie-Anne:

22:00-04:00: Carsten:

Feb 21st, Friday

04:00-10:00: Michael:

10:00-16:00: Paul:

16:00-22:00: Marie-Anne:

22:00-04:00: Carsten:

Feb 22nd, Saturday

04:00-10:00: Michael:

10:00-16:00: Paul:

16:00-22:00: Marie-Anne:

22:00-04:00: Carsten:

Feb 23rd, Sunday

04:00-10:00: Michael:

10:00-16:00: Paul:

16:00-22:00: Marie-Anne:

22:00-04:00: Carsten:

Feb 24th, Monday

04:00-10:00: Michael:

10:00-16:00: Paul:

16:00-22:00: Marie-Anne:

22:00-04:00: Carsten:

Feb 25th, Tuesday

03:30-10:30: Project 169-24 (EMIR; XPOL):