ENR CTIO Blanco 4-m 2014-11-08

The dome flat lamps that are currently available are too bright for ISPI, and

the lower end of the intensity range is too course to be useful.  For

example, for the H-band dome flats, intensity=3 gives too many counts

(~13000), even at the minimum exposure time, but intensity=2 gives too

few counts to be useful (~40).  The lamps have been changed for COSMOS

since the last ISPI run in April.  There are now four lamps where

there used to be 3, and possibly the bulbs are different too.

 

Yesterday morning I was unable to take the darks corresponding to my

science frames, because the TCS kept showing as "busy" when I tried to

run my script.  We were able to troubleshoot the problem and take

these darks after the afternoon calibrations at the beginning of this

evening''s run.  It turns out that the "Drive Enable" and "Oil Pump"

need to be on to be able to run this dark script, even though the

telescope is not commanded to move in the script (offsRA=0 and

offDEC=0).