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Daily Reports

IRAM staff at Pico:

OoD until Tue. 13th morning: Gloria Liñan (day), Joaquin Santiago (night)

OoD on Aug. 13-20: Enrique Lobato (day), Pedro Martinez (night)

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

OoD on Aug. 20-27: Joaquin Santiago (day), Sergio Amaya (night)

Relevant hardware conditions at starting:

• An improvement of air pipes, wiring, sensors, and control systems of the vertex is being finished by Rx team this week. Styrofoam membrane has been relocated in standard position before NIKA2 observations. No petals have been 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)

Note: contents of daily reports will be improved/updated at the end of current week

August 12th, Monday

21:10-24:00: 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. For the time being, any attempt must be limited to El. = 89 deg and the following max. scan speeds:
  

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

[Comment: What is limiting the maximum scanning speed ? Is it pako or is it the new drive ? <CK>]. The limitations live in the NCS (not in paKo) and they will be changed asap. A ticket related to this issue will be opened (cf. Minutes of the coordination meeting held on Aug. 19th).

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

Summary of calibration scans:

• Valid calib_1scan maps:

• Valid beam map:

August 13th, Tuesday

00:00-06:15: Angel

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

Summary of calibration scans:

• Valid calib_1scan maps:

• Valid beam map:

|| Uranus || 20240813s29 || 17.5" x 18.2" || 97.7% || 99.7% |

August 14th, Wednesday

08:20 (LT): 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" x1 8.3"	3.92	3.98
  06:31	17.4" x 19.4"	3.74	3.78
  06:41	17.4" x 18.9"	3.54	3.77
  06:51	17.2" x 18.4"	3.48	3.50
  07:01	18.5" x 21.7"	3.46	3.53
  07:11	FOCUS
  07:01	18.2" x 19.5"	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" x 18.4"	93.2	97.1

Uranus after Sun (calib_1scan; El. ):

• UT	FWHM (2 mm)	F_MB (%)	F_AP (%)
  08:16	17.5" x 17.8"	98.0	98.0

10:00: NIKA2 session stopped. Control of the telescope passed to OHB until ~16h (estimated) by agreement, for the installation of a new version of the tracking control loop in the ACU and appropriate testing.

Tracking tests (missing)

Summary of calibration scans:

• Valid calib_1scan maps:

• Valid beam map:

August 15th, Thursday

August 16th, Friday

Summary of calibration scans:

• Valid calib_1scan maps:

• Valid beam maps:

August 17th, Saturday

Summary of calibration scans:

• Valid calib_1scan maps:

• Valid beam map:

August 18th-22nd

August 23rd, Friday

12:30 - Angel (remote), Joaquin: Agreed in a staff meeting in the morning to give priority to calibration observations with NIKA2 to fill the observation gap of 10h < UT < 21h. Wind speed < 9 m/s; tau[225 GHz] ~ 0.25. DAQ started. Impossible to lower the count of bad KIDs from ~190 in arrays 1 and 2 when working on the resonances. Atmosphere looks unstable. Checking crates for these arrays anyway. Bad KIDs counts with the NIKA2 window closed: 28, 2, 24 (ar1, ar2, ar3). Window reopened and DAQ restarted. Bad KIDs counts: 196, 4, 168. Window closed again. Switching to Het. pool account, project 085-24 (EMIR E0+E1). Unable to get a decent pointing in both bands (anomalous refraction). Giving up; telescope parked at 15:10 (LT).

August 24th, Saturday

14:00 - Angel (remote), Joaquin: Wind speed < 5 m/s; tau[225 GHz] ~ 0.78. Telescope is parked since ~1h ago, when Het. pool observations of project 021-24 (GP) were suspended when pwv_l.o.s. > 15 mm; awful pointing in E0 band. Waiting for any improvement. Difficult to produce any progress on calibration data with NIKA2 under these conditions.