You are here

ENR CTIO Blanco 4-m 2024-02-27

Primary tabs

Date: 
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Telescope: 
CTIO Blanco 4-m
Submitter: 
Charlie Kilpatrick
Observer Support: 
Hernan Tirado
Night Assistant: 
Alberto Alvarez
Also Present: 
Sean Points
Problems: 

1) In the middle of the second half, the telescope started taking exposures before dithers had finished.  This problem appeared to get worse over time.  We addressed this problem by restarting the NEWFIRM GUI and reinitializing the instrument connection to the TCS.  However, the instrument initially would not take exposures and threw an error that was difficult to read over the Zoom/VNC connection.  Sean indicated that this was due to the proposal ID not being populated in the instrument GUI.  After addressing this, the original problem with the instrument exposing before the dithers had finished was resolved.

2) We noticed that 10 out of ~400 exposures exhibited the amplifier issue from previous nights, on a combination of the Pan-A, Pan-B, or both amplifiers.  The incidence of the problem seems to have improved, but it persists across a small fraction of the data.

3) After recovering from the TCS communication issue described above, we had been taking images with the "junk_" prefix, and later noticed that these images were not being copied over to the archive.  We copied these images over so they started with the "obj_" prefix instead and noted that they started being streamed to the archive after this, resolving the problem (we did not delete the original "junk_" files with the same sequence number, which can be considered as duplicates of the corresponding "obj_" files).  This was also a problem for some of the data obtained in the /data/UT20240223 folder, which we copied from "junk_"->"obj_" in the same way but may not have been uploaded to the archive.

4) The resolution of the Zoom/VNC connection has been noticeably lower the past two nights compared with the first two nights of this run.  This has caused comse minor issues with reading values on the TCS, instrument GUI, and error messages. 

Comments: 

None.

Conditions: 
General Conditions
Comment: 
None.
1st Quarter
Clouds: 
Clear
Seeing Value: 
0.00
Seeing Variability: 
0
Seeing Source: 
CTIO Seeing monitor
Sky : 
0
2nd Quarter
Clouds: 
Clear
Seeing Value: 
0.00
Seeing Variability: 
0
Seeing Source: 
CTIO Seeing monitor
Sky: 
0
3rd Quarter
Clouds: 
Clear
Seeing Value: 
1.20
Seeing Variability: 
0.2
Seeing Source: 
CTIO Seeing monitor
Sky: 
0
4th Quarter
Clouds: 
Clear
Seeing Value: 
1.20
Seeing Variability: 
0.2
Seeing Source: 
CTIO Seeing monitor
Sky: 
0
Program: 
Proposal: 
2024A-937812
Target of Oportunity: 
No
Time Observed: 
4.5
Time Engineering: 
0.0
Time lost technical: 
0.25
Time lost weather: 
0.0
Time lost other: 
0.0
Description: 
NEWFIRM Infrared Survey for Transents
Primary Investigator: 
Kilpatrick
Institution: 
Northwestern University
Instrument: 
CTIO 4m Newfirm
Organization: 
NOAO
Total Program Time: 
4.75
Total Times Time Observed Time Engineering Time lost technical Time lost weather Time lost other Total Program Time
2024-02-27 4.5 0.0 0.25 0.0 0.0 4.75