ENR CTIO Blanco 4-m 2013-05-30

DECam is mostly running very smoothly - with only minor hiccups the past 2 nights.

Tonight's technical time lost (1h30m):
0:15 to DECam shutter failure at beginning of night. Power cycled. Esteban, Marco Bonatti, Hernan, Alistair resolved.
1:15 to power loss to top ring (similar to last night) resulted in LabView hanging on DECal,
   which was unrecoverable for 45 minutes. See e-log #84951 for details. David James resolved.
 
RASICAM: same behaviour as last night. Sky image is changing
  negligibly, even with significant cloud cover and variability, and some stationary
  blobs are dominating the image (described last night). In this
  condition, RASICAM is significantly less useful than the TASCA
  all-sky camera (which can at least show some light cloud when it is
  present).
  Given that we are looking at the RASICAM page frequently during the
  night, it might be a good idea to include a TASCA image on the
  RASICAM page.

* Non-sidereal tracking appears to not yet be available. It was
  available on the old TCS, I believe. Should probably be available
  for observers wanting to tracking moving objects in solar
  system. New TCS is working great! But would be great to have this
  additional feature.

* Room 101 in dorms: there is a ~quarter-inch gap in the wall below the
  heating unit. I plugged it up with a towel. Fortunately
  neither night was particularly windy. Please fix.

* The CTIO environmental pages need some clean up:
  http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/content/Sky-Conditions

  I would probably recommend that Edison and David W and one of the
  staff astronomers sit down for an hour and go through the
  environmental links/content in some detail. I tried to clean up some
  of the links after the overhaul to the new CTIO website last year,
  but more work is needed. The links/content accessible from the CTIO
  main page should be relevant to visiting astronomers and telescope
  operators. Any links/content that are old/deprecated/no longer
  supported - should be removed from
  http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/content/Sky-Conditions or its related
  webpages.
 
  (1) TASCA images are very useful, but are only linked from a single
  link on the Sky-Conditions page. They should be in a more convenient
  location. Maybe put most recent frame on environmental page?

  Where is the archive of TASCA movies?  TASCA movies for a given
  night should be archived, and made easily accessible on a website
  for NOAO observers - and available for many months/years if
  possible. If they are archived, I could not easily find them. For
  inspiration, I would suggest looking over the MMTO AllSkyCamera
  archive: http://skycam.mmto.arizona.edu/.

  (2) On the TOLOLO Site Environmental Web Page
  http://ctio4l.ctio.noao.edu/web/CTIO/environ.php
  It might be nice to include the most recent TASCA image (maybe
  blue or red band) to the gallery of images at the bottom of the
  page. Just an idea. Everyone looks at that environmental page anyway,
  whereas sometimes as an observer I forget that the TASCA images exist.

  (3) On the page "Sky Conditions"
  http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/content/Sky-Conditions
  The third link is "Cerro Tololo Site Monitoring"
  http://139.229.12.28:24680/status.php
  When you click "home", you get the page
  http://139.229.12.28:24680/index.php
  titled "Status Report for T3" -
  which shows a long string of error messages. This may be of
  diagnostic use, but it is not clear why it would be the "home page".
  If you click on "Webcam", you get this page:
  http://139.229.12.28:24680/webcam.php
  which shows a daytime image from January 2012.
  Long story short, my impression is that the
  "Cerro Tololo Site Monitoring" link on
  http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/content/Sky-Conditions
  is not useful for observers or TOs, and should probably be removed.

  (4) On the page "Sky Conditions"
  http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/content/Sky-Conditions if I click on
  "Tololo All Sky Camera (TASCA)", I get a nice red filter all-sky
  image. But if I click on "Internal TASCA links and gallery" at the
  bottom of the page, it directs me to
  http://139.229.115.232/lastpic.php, which gives an error "Not Found
  The requested URL /lastpic.php was not found on this server."
  So the link should be fixed or removed.

  (5) On the page "Sky Conditions"
  http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/content/Sky-Conditions
  The link "Scatter Plots DIMMs Daily" is dead/abandoned.
  The link "Scatter Plots DIMMs Monthy" (should obviously be "Monthly") is dead/abandoned.
  The link "Scatter Plots DIMMs Monthy Selectable Wind Direction" is dead/abandoned.
  These links should be removed from the page or fixed.

  (6) On the page "Sky Conditions"
  http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/content/Sky-Conditions
  "CTIO Sky Conditions Archive: Was your night photometric?"
  links to a page /noao/old-weather-logs
  which carries *monthly* max/min/average values which
  are not relevant to whether a given night was photometric.
  I would retitle the link and remove "Was your night photometric?"

  (7) On the front CTIO page:
  http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/
  If I click "Astronomers", "Sky Conditions", "Tololo Environmental Page",
  it takes me to this page:
  http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/content/CTIO-Environmental-Page
  This page only has two pieces of content: a link to the actual
  "Intermal Environmental webpage" (should be "Internal"),
  and an image tololo_weather.jpg which is updated every 5 minutes.
  It is not clear why this image exists. It seems much simpler
  if the link "Tololo Environmental Page" simply took one
  to the "Internal Environmental webpage"
  http://ctio4l.ctio.noao.edu/web/CTIO/environ.php
  and skipped the intermediate page
  http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/content/CTIO-Environmental-Page
  which appears to serve no purpose.

  Note that many of the satellite images linked from the
  CTIO webpages are out-of-date by ~9 days. This is due to a
  failure of the GOES-13 satellite on May 22nd. News on this
  is at: http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/
  Something to keep an eye on -- GOES-13 may not come back,
  so some of the links may need updated in the near future.