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ENR CTIO Blanco 4-m 2026-02-05

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Date: 
Thursday, February 5, 2026
Telescope: 
CTIO Blanco 4-m
Submitter: 
Conor Ransome
Submitter Email: 
cransome@arizona.edu
Observer Support: 
Rodrigo Hernandez
Night Assistant: 
Roberto Aviles
Also Present: 
Kathy Vivas, and the Shadow Crew
Problems: 

At 12:05am we started getting these warning messages: Cannot connect to dislay IB DISPIB to prepare for image. Try again. Message: connection failed

Comfort displayed stopped displaying images. Other than that, observations continued and images were looking good. Although it seemed we could just continue observing, being an engineering night, I decided to stop and restart SISPI, which solved the problem. Communication error?

At 2:31am the queue suddenly stopped (in the middle of the star flat sequence for the N1008 filter). Unfortunately I (Kathy) did not realized the queue had stopped until ~20 minutes later. There were no error messages, and once the queue was restarted, the observations continued with no problem. Looking at the OCS log there is indeed an error at 2:31am: HEXAPOD not ready for exposure 1454259 after 10 tries. Current state: MOVING 

On a separate topic, images from today are not being ingested in the astro data archive. This was first noticed by Frank Valdes in the afternoon. The issue has been reported to Sean McMannus. 

 

Comments: 

The Shadow team (2025B-589422, PI Sand) practiced today ToO interruptions. Everything went well, except receiving the reduced data soon because of the archive problem mentioned in the other section. In any case, the main goal of the exercise was for the team to practice the ToO triggering protocol since they will be interrupting a lot this semester.

A full sequence of starflats were taken today in all filters currently mounted in DECam: g r i z M464 M490 N501 and N1008

Some observations for 2025B-441993 were obtained by request of Alfredo Zenteno.

 

Conditions: 
General Conditions
Comment: 
None.
1st Quarter
Clouds: 
Clear
Wind: 
Low
Seeing Value: 
1.10
Seeing Variability: 
0.2
Seeing Source: 
The Telescope I used
Sky : 
0
2nd Quarter
Clouds: 
Clear
Wind: 
Low
Seeing Value: 
1.10
Seeing Variability: 
0.2
Seeing Source: 
The Telescope I used
Sky: 
0
3rd Quarter
Clouds: 
Clear
Seeing Value: 
1.10
Seeing Variability: 
0.2
Seeing Source: 
The Telescope I used
Sky: 
0
4th Quarter
Clouds: 
Clear
Wind: 
Low
Seeing Value: 
1.10
Seeing Variability: 
0.2
Seeing Source: 
The Telescope I used
Sky: 
0
Program: 
Proposal: 
2025B-589422
Target of Oportunity: 
yes
Time Observed: 
0.25
Time Engineering: 
0.0
Time lost technical: 
0.0
Time lost weather: 
0.0
Time lost other: 
0.0
Description: 
Shadow
Primary Investigator: 
Sand
Email: 
dsand@arizona.edu
Institution: 
University of Arizona
Instrument: 
CTIO 4m DECam
Organization: 
NOAO
Total Program Time: 
0.25
Proposal: 
2025B-441993
Target of Oportunity: 
No
Time Observed: 
1.5
Time Engineering: 
0.0
Time lost technical: 
0.0
Time lost weather: 
0.0
Time lost other: 
0.0
Description: 
Galaxy Clusters
Primary Investigator: 
Monteiro
Instrument: 
CTIO 4m DECam
Organization: 
NOAO
Total Program Time: 
1.5
Proposal: 
2013A-9999
Target of Oportunity: 
No
Time Observed: 
6.5
Time Engineering: 
0.0
Time lost technical: 
0.0
Time lost weather: 
0.0
Time lost other: 
0.0
Description: 
Engineering
Primary Investigator: 
Walker
Email: 
alistair.walker@noirlab.edu
Institution: 
CTIO
Instrument: 
CTIO 4m DECam
Organization: 
NOAO
Total Program Time: 
6.5
Total Times Time Observed Time Engineering Time lost technical Time lost weather Time lost other Total Program Time
2026-02-05 8.25 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 8.25