ENR CTIO Blanco 4-m 2014-09-01

# Afternoon bias and flats, expnums 354261-354369

# Beginning of night standards

** none, did not open

# David James contacted to begin DECal coarse None filter scan at 19:30pm local time

# Details of DECal scans are in elog #232

 

*Problems*

 

# Twice so far tonight on observer2, the ICS display that is open on the SISPI browser duplicated itself on another browser page (specifically, the one displaying the Tololo weather) open elsewhere in the desktop. Refreshing the affected browser window returns the display as it was before the ICS attack.

 

# At 2:53 UT (exp 354423), the data handlers failed to create images, and IB1 and IB2 were unresponsive: two backplanes were not working.  We attempted to re-configure SISPI, but this did not bring DHs and IBs back online.  We restarted SISPI and started DECal scans again at 3:10 UT.  DECal started fine and went smoothly.

 

# At 3:57 UT (exp 354458), observers checked DECal images and found seemingly odd structure in images: 3 backplanes of images showed an unfamiliar pattern: the chips had four quadrants with different count levels.  This was unfamiliar to observers and support.  We restarted SISPI.  During restart, we checked zero images, and found this is expected behavior: at very low counts this pattern is visible.  The DECal scan was looking at an out-of-band region, where counts should be very low, similar to a zero image.  DECal scans were restarted, since SISPI was restarted.

 

# At 5:19 UT (exp 354496), DECal stopped without any warnings.  At 6:00 UT, observers and support noticed that the observations had stopped.  Support continued DECal scans.

 

 

*Notes for data management*

 

# Do not process 354359-386, 425-426, 459-467

# 384: attempt to move all filters out of aperture.  Bug in interaction b/t SISPI and FCM: syntax does not allow for SISPI to take all filters out; SISPI developers aware through internal communication.  Can move all filters out through FCM native commands (e.g., set filter 0). However, DECal has to use SISPI syntax (e.g., set filter none).

# 459-467: these were normal exposures to zero and flush after restarting SISPI.

# 459, 465 were attempts by observers to understand the low-count behavior of CCDs before remembering the low-count pattern is normal.

 

 

*Other*

 

# Lots of clouds and high humidity all night.  Yet another great night for DECal scans...