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ENR CTIO Blanco 4-m 2013-09-08

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Date: 
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Telescope: 
CTIO Blanco 4-m
Submitter: 
Eusebio Sanchez
Submitter Email: 
eusebio.sanchez@ciemat.es
Observer Support: 
Hernan Tirado
Night Assistant: 
Claudio Aguilera
Also Present: 
Niall Macrann, Andres Plazas, Tim Eifler
Problems: 
  • We get a ICS telemetry alarm every half an hour. This will be fixed next morning.
  • 19:32 An alert appears, with the following messages:
  • "OCS not ready. Monitor is not set." 
  • "Interlock SISPI (shutter) is now broken" 
  • "Interlock DECAM (SISPI) is now broken" 
  • We try to do a configure, and after two times, it solved the problem. Hernan restarted the shutter.
  • Several alerts from the GUIDER: No active CCDs. Probably the reason is that it is very cloudy and the guider cannot identify stars
  • At the beginning of the night we were observing with an airmass of 1.3.
  • 23:11: we are getting very bad seeing. Around 2 arcsec for the latest exposures (231855). The 0.9m telescope has also very bad seeing, we have cross-checked. It improved during the nigh down to around 1.3 and went worse  (~1.6) in the last third.
  • This night has been windy. The telescope shields were closed. Cloudy sky from the beginning of the night up to ~21:30. After some hours of clear sky, it became cloudy again (~3:00).
  • Exposures 231914 and 231915 cover the same area.The telescope operator reported an error in the coordinates (out of range). Due to this error, the telescope did not move between these exposures. The same error happened again for exposures 231920 and 231921. We detected a problem in the script which was sending negative RA values to the telescope. We delete the negative RA values and continue the data taking. However, Obstac kept producing negative RA values. We contacted Anne Elliott and finally Eric Neilsen, who fixed the bug. He has installed a new version of obstac, but at that time, obstac had started to take SN fields, so we decided to wait before restarting SISPI to get this new version.
  • After finishing supernovae data, the negative RA reappears for exposure 231980, which points to the same area than 231979.
Comments: 

Exposures:

  • standard bias and dome flat sequence
  • evening standard star
  • Survey Exposures
  • Supernovae fields
  • morning standard stars
Conditions: 
General Conditions
Temperature Max: 
20.00
Temperature Min: 
16.00
Humidity Max: 
30
Humidity Min: 
18
Wind Speed Max: 
20.00
Wind Speed Min: 
5.00
Comment: 
None.
1st Quarter
Clouds: 
Partially cloudy
Wind: 
Medium
Seeing Value: 
1.80
Seeing Variability: 
0.4
Seeing Source: 
Other
Sky : 
6
2nd Quarter
Clouds: 
Partially cloudy
Wind: 
Low
Seeing Value: 
1.60
Seeing Variability: 
0.2
Seeing Source: 
Other
Sky: 
2
3rd Quarter
Clouds: 
Partially cloudy
Wind: 
Medium
Seeing Value: 
1.40
Seeing Variability: 
0.2
Seeing Source: 
Other
Sky: 
1
4th Quarter
Clouds: 
Partially cloudy
Wind: 
Medium
Seeing Value: 
1.60
Seeing Variability: 
0.4
Seeing Source: 
Other
Sky: 
5
Program: 
Proposal: 
2012B-0001
Target of Oportunity: 
No
Time Observed: 
10.0
Time Engineering: 
0.0
Time lost technical: 
0.0
Time lost weather: 
0.0
Time lost other: 
0.0
Description: 
Dark Energy Survey
Primary Investigator: 
Josh Frieman
Email: 
frieman@fnal.gov
Institution: 
Fermilab
Instrument: 
CTIO 4m DECam
Organization: 
NOAO
Total Program Time: 
10
Total Times Time Observed Time Engineering Time lost technical Time lost weather Time lost other Total Program Time
2013-09-08 10.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 10