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Daily Reports

IRAM staff at Pico:

OoD until Tuesday morning: Gloria Liñan (day), Joaquin Santiago (night)

OoD for the rest of the week: Enrique Lobato (day), Pedro Martinez (night)

Rx & Astro: Dave John, Carlos Duran, Miguel Sanchez, Pablo Torne, Angel Bongiovanni

Relevant hardware conditions at starting:

• An improvement of air pipes, wiring, sensors and control systems of the vertex are being finished by Rx team along this week. Styrofoam membrane has been relocated in standard position before NIKA2 observations. No petals installed yet in the vertex. Some pieces of foam layers need to be replaced between the petals and the styrofoam membrane.
• 15:30 (LT): Last NIKA2 cooling down steps (DJ): turning on amplifiers of 1 mm arrays. No evident PT noise. Bad KIDs (window closed): 16, 1, 25 (ar1, 2, 3)
• 20:20 (LT): Opening NIKA2 window, El. 60 deg. Waiting for a final T_MC stabilization (172 mK). Bad KIDs: 30, 3, 43 (ar1, 2, 3)

August 12th, Monday

21:10 - Miguel, Angel: Starting with tau225GHz~0.45; a drop is expected. Mild wind speed (~6-8 m/s). DAQ restarted—bad KIDs: 31, 4, 35 (ar1, 2, 3). The NIKA2 pointing model is not updated. First pointing try was on 1741-038. The only issues at the beginning were related to a bad indent issue in the make_IMBFITS_nika.py code and a high deviation of the source in El. (~80") in the first map. It was fixed after repositioning M3 & M4.

Summary:

• Relatively stable atmosphere over the night, with several short periods of instabilities/opacity spikes

• Sidelobes max. values are fairly well contained in maps at mean elevations (<6% at 2 mm and <12% at 1 mm)

• Bad scans (tracking deviations >20%): 20240812s169 and 20240813s1, s2, s7, although wind speed was <9 m/s in all cases.

• Scan with invalid antenna traces: 20240812s199

• High elevation scans (azel system) revisited. The maximum scan speed allowed (i.e. under the current NCS capabilities) as a function of elevation is as follows. [Comment: What is limiting the maximum scanning speed ? Is it pako or is it the new drive ? <CK>] Any attempt must be limited to El. = 89 deg:

  Elevation (deg)	Scan speed (arcsec/s)
  80	30
  83	20
  84	15
  86	10
  88	10

• Likely valid calib_1scan:

  • NGC7027: 20240812s189, 21:25 UT
    

    MWC349: 20240812s190, 21:37 UT
    

    CRL2688: 20240812s191, 21:44 UT
    

    Uranus: 20240813s8, 01:55 UT
    

    Neptune: 20240813s4, 20240813s17
    [Comment: What does the QL say about the flux in the main beam ?]; AB: Numbers are being compiled

• Beam maps:

  • 2251+158: 20240812s213, 23:47 UT
    

    Uranus: 20240813s29, 03:27 UT
    

06:15: NIKA2 session finished for giving a chance to complete EMIR calibration sequences on Uranus & Mars

August 13th, Tuesday

AB: Not finished yet - Under completion

23:30 - Miguel, Angel: Works on the vertex finished (DJ, CD, PM).

• Valid calib_1scan:

  • NGC7027: 20240813s113, 22:38 UT; 22040814s36, 05:27 UT
    

    Uranus: 20240813s8, 01:55 UT
    

    MWC349: 20240814s,
    

    CRL2688: 20240814s,
    

    Neptune: 20240813s4, 20240813s17
    

• Beam maps:

08:20: Telescope sent to 0851+202, at ~12 deg. from Sun position. Kept there for ~1h with FWHM/flux measurements every ~10 min. Then, the calib_1scan on Mars and Uranus were repeated.

Mars before Sun exposition (calib_1scan; El. 64.8 deg.):

• UT	FWHM (2 mm)	F_MB (%)	F_AP (%)
  05:59	17.9"x18.1"	97.8	100.8

Uranus before Sun exposition (calib_1scan; El. 72.2 deg.):

• UT	FWHM (2 mm)	F_MB (%)	F_AP (%)
  06:11	17.4"x18.1"	96.8	100.4

0851+202 - Direct Sun radiation on M1 (pointing scans):

• UT	FWHM (2 mm)	F_MB (Jy)	F_AP (Jy)
  06:21	17.8"x18.3"	3.92	3.98
  06:31	17.4"x19.4"	3.74	3.78
  06:41	17.4"x18.9"	3.54	3.77
  06:51	17.2"x18.4"	3.48	3.50
  07:01	18.5"x21.7"	3.46	3.53
  07:11	FOCUS
  07:01	18.2"x19.5"	3.71	3.72

Mars after Sun exposition (calib_1scan; El. 74.3 deg.) and focus correction:

• UT	FWHM (2 mm)	F_MB (%)	F_AP (%)
  08:11	18.0"x18.4"	93.2	97.1

Uranus after Sun (calib_1scan; El. ):

• UT	FWHM (2 mm)	F_MB (%)	F_AP (%)
  08:16	17.5"x17.8"	98.0	98.0

10:00: NIKA2 session stopped. Telescope control passed to OHB until 16h by agreement, for the installation of a new controller in the ACU & tests.