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ENR CTIO Blanco 4-m 2024-02-21

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Date: 
Wednesday, February 21, 2024
Telescope: 
CTIO Blanco 4-m
Submitter: 
Points
Submitter Email: 
Observer Support: 
Hernan Tirado
Night Assistant: 
Alberto Alvarez
Problems: 

None.

Comments: 

1) Dome flat exposure times and lamp intensity values have drastically changed since Jan.  In Jan, lamp intensity values were 100%, now we have to cut the values to 10% or less in order to not saturate the detectors.  Lamps and KG1 filters will be revised on 2024-02-22.

2) There was condensation on the dewar window at the beginning of the night.  The hose was connected but the flow of dry air was very low.  We increased the flow of air and the condensation went away.

3) Tested the scripting capabiliies on sky.  It was a learning experience to debug.

4) We experienced problems with the amplifier read out which caused significant noise spikes across the detector in 2-5% of images.

5) When data were uploaded to the archive, they were uploaded under the incorrect proposal ID "newfirm_default" despite the science program proposal ID being in the header of each data file.

6) There was a TCS crash in the beginning of the night leading to a loss of time and pointing issues after recovery.

7) In multiple seqrun.py image sequences obtained toward the end of the night, the instrument started integrating before the telescope had finished an offset.  This caused several smeared sources in obj_0681.fits, obj_0685.fits, obj_0689.fits, obj_0693.fits.

8) Some of our images were clobbered when we attempted to take exposures with the same image names as existing data in our data directory.  Existing data in the data directory could be obtained with different file prefixes or exclusively at lower sequence numbers than those for the science data.

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: 
0.00
Seeing Variability: 
0
Seeing Source: 
CTIO Seeing monitor
Sky: 
0
4th Quarter
Clouds: 
Clear
Seeing Value: 
0.00
Seeing Variability: 
0
Seeing Source: 
CTIO Seeing monitor
Sky: 
0
Program: 
Proposal: 
NEWFIRM ENG
Target of Oportunity: 
No
Time Observed: 
0.0
Time Engineering: 
3.0
Time lost technical: 
1.0
Time lost weather: 
0.0
Time lost other: 
0.0
Description: 
NEWFIRM Engineerings
Primary Investigator: 
Points
Institution: 
CTIO
Instrument: 
CTIO 4m Newfirm
Organization: 
NOAO
Total Program Time: 
4
Proposal: 
2024A-937812
Target of Oportunity: 
No
Time Observed: 
4.5
Time Engineering: 
0.0
Time lost technical: 
0.0
Time lost weather: 
0.0
Time lost other: 
0.0
Description: 
Transients
Primary Investigator: 
Charlie Kilpatrick
Institution: 
Northwestern University
Instrument: 
CTIO 4m Newfirm
Organization: 
NOAO
Total Program Time: 
4.5
Total Times Time Observed Time Engineering Time lost technical Time lost weather Time lost other Total Program Time
2024-02-21 4.5 3.0 1.0 0.0 0.0 8.5