Daily Reports
Contents
Oct 25th, Tuesday
During the maintenance slot, the OS of nika2-b machine was updated and rebooted (PM, JT, WR) as planned; DJ switched to the 2nd trap of the NIKA2 cryostat, HP pressure/MC temp. checked, temperature timelines and noise traces OK after that.
16:00-21:00; Angel, Emilia, Matt: Telescope parked due to the wind. System check OK (t07 account).
21:00-03:15; Matt: Weather is definitely not good enough for NIKA-2, but luckily the wind has calmed down so we can observe. After some initial problems with weather at about 22:20 we got on sky for project 018-22. Tau is horrendous and not that stable, but we seem to be OK for this bright CO line. Carried out 1 rep. of domapC1, PWV reading still between 7-11mm, moved onto C2. During C2 cal's now report 11-14mm above threshold - had reduced by next scan. 1/4 way through C3 scan but then had to abort due to wind. Just after one hour we restarted by atmosphere stability was terrible, but waited 15 mins and we were good! After a few pointings, cals started observations for 043-22, performed 8 times 12 min observations.
Oct 26th, Wednesday
03:15-09:00; Angel: Observations of L1544 (EMIR backup project 043-22) continued. We stopped for a while two times before ~04:30 due to atmosphere instability. A PWV between 6 and 9 mm in the l.o.s. (MRTCAL) after that. A total of 9 reps. were observed. Changing to project 051-22. Telescope parked at 06:05 after trying the first pointing scan due to repeated motor current alarms (wind speed around the limits). Observations resumed at 06:40; still being on project 051-22: NGC 1977, 1 rep. of map4-vertical, and 1 rep. of map1-horizontal. Stopped again at 07:45: pwv rising above 11 mm, unstable atmosphere. Again, wind speed is close to the limit. Opacity rising above 1.2 at 08:10; sustained wind gusts of 17-18 m/s. No immediate substantial improvement is expected. Telescope parked at 08:20.
09:00-15:00; Gianluca: Bad and unstable weather prevented us from observing. We unsuccessfully tried a couple of times calibration, pointing, and focus.
15:00-21:00; Emilia:Bad and unstable weather prevented us from observing. We unsuccessfully tried once for calibration, pointing, and focus.
21:00-03:00; Matt: Managed to get on sky around 21:30 with EMIR. Started calibrations for 018-22, and started C3 map with their 12CO line - Unfortunately tau staying stubbornly around 0.8. Switch to their 13CO and C180 line which is fine so ran a C1, and then C2. Unfortunately, had to abort half way through C2 run due to wind exceeding limits. Probably lost 30-50 minutes due to wind, but then restarted project 018-22 starting with C3 map obtaining nice detections of 13CO and C18O. In last hour switched to 043-22, pointed and focused on Mars, and then started 12' repeats (3 reps. until the end of the shift).
Oct 27th, Thursday
03:00-21:00; Angel: Continuing on the EMIR backup project 043-22. Second otf of rep. 4 on L1544 canceled (scan 20221027s22; 03:12) after a sudden rising of the opacity (tau_225GHz > 1.5); unstable (=> exp. fit of taumeter records got weird for some tips). Changing to project test. After a while, we take the opportunity to compare pwv estimations from tau_Z values coming from the taumeter (0.62, 225 GHz => 10.6 mm) and a skydip at approximately the same azimuth (0.1, 97.5 GHz => 9 mm): roughly self-consistent. Science observations resumed at ~04h; mean tau_225GHz ~ 0.7: 4.5 reps. on L1544 were obtained. At 05:10 we changed to project 051-22: NGC 1977, 1 rep. of map1-ver, 1 rep. of map2-hor, and 1 rep. of map2-ver. Nice expected emission lines in selected averaged spectra. Weird pointing corrections on 0458-020 after that (~06:30). Large pwv variations (from 9 to 11 mm) in the l.o.s. Changing to project test for monitoring. Hints of anomalous refraction at intermediate elevations, quite stable at higher ones. Resuming science observations for project 051-22 at ~07:30; much more stable. NGC 1977, 1 rep. of map3-hor, and 1 rep. of map3-ver. IMBfits files from scan 20221027s93 onwards have 0 bytes. Asking for restoring the corresponding data filler.
09:00-15:00; Gianluca: Observations stopped between 9:00-9:30 due to EMIR FTS backend issue in generating the output files. Between 9:30-10:30 we observed with NIKA2 (only testing), we verified that everything worked properly, but weather conditions were not good to perform the observations.
Oct 28th, Friday
Oct 29th, Saturday
Oct 30th, Sunday
Oct 31st, Monday