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 continue on 184-18 project in stable conditions (0.3)
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.