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Daily Reports

Oct 29th, Tuesday

10:30; Federico De Luca, Stefano Andreon and Angel Bongiovanni at the telescope. Juan Macías can join in remote mode. Adverse weather: snow/electrical storm, strong wind gusts. A bolt stroke apparently affected the power supply of the anemometer at the station (to be checked after storm; spare part is prepared).

15:30-23:00; Federico, Angel: The syntheziser of array 1 was substituted by NEEL's unit and everything (cryostat health, noise traces, etc.) has been checked by Dave. The instrument is ready for observations. Telescope stopped, deicing on. Weather forecasts are adverse at least until midnight.

23:00-24:00: Juan, Angel: Bad weather continues. Wind gusts, despite tau_225GHz ~0.5. Deicing still on.

Oct 30th, Wednesday

00:00-07:00: Juan: Wind, snow.

07:00-15:00; Stefano: Still stopped. Wind, light snow.

15:00-23:00; Federico: Strong wind gusts. Snowing at intervals.

Oct 31st, Thursday

00:00-07:00: Juan: Strong wind (~25 m/s according to OSN anemometer) at midnight, dropping speed over the shift. Snowing until ~04h and tau_225GHz > 1.2 all the time. Deicing off at ~05:30. Snowing again since ~06h. Cloudy at dawn.

07:00-15:00; Stefano: Bad weather (strong wind, low visibility), yet better than previous days.

15:00-23:00; Federico: Anemometer repaired (~15:10). Wind speed about 10m/s, but it's a cloudy afternoon (tau~1). Waiting for better weather condition. At 17h the weather is much better. Starting scientific observation with EMIR, project 058-24. After first calibration, we moved to test account to check if all is ok & pointing and focus. tau_225 is continuously dropping. All ok, at ~17:30 started scientific obs. of 058-24, NOTF6V, NOTF7H, NOTF7V done. tau-225~0.6 for all the observation. Spindle error during NOTF7H, script interrupted and launched again. After NOTF7V, larger instability in tau and anomalous refraction evidence in pointing. Starting monitoring the weather under test account. Resumed observation of project 058-24, NOTF8h (21:55h). Then changed project to 017-24. Juan takes over with Angel.

Nov 1st, Friday

0:00-06:00: Juan, Angel: taking over from Federico. Two repetitions on B5_HSEdge, project 017-24 (EMIR backup). Opacity increased up to tau225GHz ~ 1 after that. Several wind alarms in the middle. Switch to project test at ~01:00 for monitoring. Anomalous refraction evidence in ponting scans. Wind speed raised to 26 m/s at 01:45. Telescope stopped. Bad weather till 05:30.

Juan resumed at 05:30. Three additional repetitions on B5_HSEdge for 017-24. Then move to project 009-29 (EMIR backup). Opacity is dropping to 0.3-0.4. Atmosphere apparently more stable.

Stefano from 6:00-15:00, Angel from 6:30: Weather conditions improving. Pointing on 0736+017 (weak) then on Mars. At 6:30 swapping to NIKA2. No source available for beam map, post-posed to a later time (on 1226+023). DAQ started at 07:00, run 80, total power; bad KIDs: 28, 4, 33 (ar1, 2, 3), sky-illuminated. Pointing on Mars. Software problem with the analysis of the pointing after a couple of tries.: QL doesn't work with run 80. Angel and Jean patched it. Switching to run 79, total power. DAQ restarted at 08:50; bad KIDs: 32, 2, 34 (ar1, 2, 3). Pointing (-4.8 41.8) and focus (1.3) on Mars. Strong wind (20 km/s peak), tracking errors (small, +-2" on data, larger, 3-4" peak from Grafana monitor), large apparent homology errors. Calib_1scan. Several tracks to fix homology errors. <AB>: after a JLS's consultation to IR, these large homology errors are only apparent. They are caused by the non-zero lateral focus corrections adopted for NIKA2. Pointing on Mars, then skydip. Weather is borderline for the scientific programs, switched to polarimetry to catch possible problems. DAQ restarted with HPW in the optical path at 10:45, run 79, polarimetry, bad KIDs: 31, 3, 34 (ar1, 2, 3). Pointing, focus, and calib1_scan on Mars, then pointing and calib1_scan two strongly polarized sources (0851+202, 0716+714), then again Mars, then 1226+023=3C273 (with focus at 11:58), and 3C286, then closing the NIKA2 session with pointing, focus (at 12:27 and 12:51) and calib1_scan on 1226 again. Opacity is increasing, switching to EMIR at 13:15. Program 085-24 (WSw). Pointing on 1226+023. Problems with E150 tuning. Focus at 14:15 on 1226+023

15:30-23:00; Federico: Started observation with EMIR of proj. 071-24. Done tuning, pointing and focus on K3-50A, then started scientific observation with line calibrator. Continued with OTF maps for beta/lambda directions, subscans 6, and beta direction of subscan 7. Source starts declining and low in el (~21deg), changed project to 058-24. Calibration, focus and pointing on NGC7027. Started observation of NOTF8v, but backends not connected properly (~20min lost). Scans cancelled and tuning redone. Continued observation with NOTF8v and NOTF9 (horizontal and vertical). At ~19:30 switched to NIKA2. DAQ restarted, run 79, total power at ~20h; bad KIDs: 32, 2, 34 (ar1, 2, 3). Opacity is ~0.45 (tau225 GHz), but stable. Taking advantage of this limit for a NIKA2 pointing session. Summary:

(*)After new focus

During the pointing session we did also 4 @calib_1scan to NGC7027 (20241101s187), CRL2688 (s188), MWC349 (s189), NGC7538 (s200), a focus on NGC7538, and then another @calib_1scan to uranus (s206)

23:00-07:00; Juan: taking from Federico.

• Start with skydip, move to Uranus for beammap (20241101s219) including pointing, focus and calib1scan (20241101s216). Tau around 0.4 and stable during beam map (20241101s219).

• 091-24: pointing on nearby source and observe 1 rep PSZ2G113 s221 -- 20241102s1 , which is at about 60 deg in elevation. PIIC indicates s223 is corrupted for 2 mm but fine at 1 mm. Large atmospheric fluctuations and tau rising so we stop.

• Focus (20241102s5 -- s9) and calib1scan (20241102s11) on Uranus to wait for stability and sources to rise up.

• 011-24: Pointing on 0458-020 and then 1 rep on Orion B for @ ~/011-24/observe-orionb-1 (s13, 33 minutes) and @ ~/011-24/observe-orionb-2 (s14, 33 minutes). Tau ~ 0.35, Fluctuations baseline @ 2mm of +- 5 Jy/beam

• 090-24: Pointing on 0923+392. Observe PSZ2G186 (3 rep) with tau ~ 0.32 , fluctuations baseline @ 2mm of < +- 5 Jy/beam

• 091-24: Pointing and focus on 0851+202 (at 6:30). Resonances reworked at 06:55 (LT), still on run 79, total power: bad KIDs: 29, 2, 33 (ar1, 2, 3). One repetition on PSZ2G210 started at 7:00

Nov 2nd, Saturday

7:00-15:00; Stefano: Program 087-24: Pointing on 0836+710, 1 repeat (2 rounds) on id303. Sunrise at ~8:45. Pointing and focus on Mars (9:30). Pointing on 0836+710. Cirrus coming, hopefully stay away from pointing direction. 2 repeat (2 rounds each) on id303, pointing on 0836+710, half repeat on id303. Pointing and failed (weather degrading fast) focus on 1803+784. Pointing and focus on 0923+392. Huge weather (tau) instability (thick clouds passing over) during the focus of 0923+392. Tau>1 at ~13:00, observations suspended.

@11 SB: fixed the DAFs for the new sweep (Cryo Run 80) and tested them online with Angel on scans 20241101s32,33,34. They work now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

15:30-23:00; Federico: Bad weather, tau>1.5 and we're surrounded by clouds. It's also lightly snowing. Waiting for better conditions.

Federico and AB (~16h, LT): DAQ restarted, run 80, total power: bad KIDs: 146, 14, 109 (ar1, 2, 3); quite cloudy, only valid for testing the PIIC-QL performance with run 80. JT restored new imbFITS creation after fixing the DAFs by SB; the same was done for the old imbFITS. So, starting from scan 20241102s89 (scan 20241102s88 was cancelled due to NCS problem), next scans will be carried out with run80.ini (TP or POL).

Two pointing tests on Venus, fully QL-reduced. Switching to EMIR, backup project 033-24. (~17h-17:30) Due to unstable weather conditions, used test account for pointing and focus. No valid pointings and focuses on sources nearby 033-24 targets (used 1757-240) or at higher elevations (1633+382). Waiting for better weather conditions to attempt new focus. At ~18:10h, we finally have good weather for pointing and focus. Done on test account on 2251+158. Then started obs. of L6942, scan A, setup 2 and also 1 repetition on L429, scan A, setup 1. Moved to proj. 058-24, done NOTF10 and NOTF11, both horizontal and vertical.

Tau_225 start to be much more stable at ~0.35. Switch back to Nika2. DAQ restarted, run 80, total power at ~22h; bad KIDs: 24, 3, 36 (ar1, 2, 3). Calibration session: pointing and focus on NGC7027, then @calib_1scan to NGC7027 (scan 20241102s172), CRL2688 (s173), MWC349 (s174), Neptune (s177), Uranus (s180)

)

23:00-07:00; Juan: Take over from Federico with a focus on Uranus and a pointing

• Beammap on total power: Uranus (s187) + skydip (s188)
• Beammap on polarisation: pointing (s) + Uranus (s)

Nov 3rd, Sunday