There was a problem at the beginning of the night with the rotator. We we tried to apply an East-West offset, the star moved North-South. Rolo checked the TCS side and saw that the offsets were being sent correctly to the TCS. Javier and Humberto went up into the dome revise the rotator. We restarted the rotator application and the offsets functioned as they should. The rest of the night went smoothly.
| Total Times | Time Observed | Time Engineering | Time lost technical | Time lost weather | Time lost other | Total Program Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-09-16 | 0.0 | 9.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.0 | 10 |
Links
[1] mailto:spoints@ctio.noao.edu
[2] http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/field-collection/field-nr-prog/3407/delete?destination=print/content/enr-ctio-blanco-4-m-2016-09-16
[3] http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/field-collection/field-nr-prog/3407/edit?destination=print/content/enr-ctio-blanco-4-m-2016-09-16
[4] http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/field-collection/field-nr-prog/add/node/10551?destination=print/content/enr-ctio-blanco-4-m-2016-09-16
We began the first night of TripleSpec and f/8 engineering. The first half was used to make a pointing map. The second half of the night was used to observe with TripleSpec. We obtained spectra of stars with J magnitudes ranging from 7-16. These data will be reduced and checked against the predicted S/N calculations from the ETC spreadsheet.
During the night I took some screen shots as the observations were in progress to include in a yet-to-be-written Observing Guide. We also gained more information on the telescope focus value as a function of temperature.
Some other notes:
1) WHen I have a vncviewer open for tspec0:9 on my MacBook using RealVNC I can hear a beep at the end of each exposure. When using the TigerVNC on observer2, the beep is not heard.
2) The detectors for TripleSpec are "On" after the observing software is started. For safety, it may be a good idea for the default startup to have the detectors "Off"
3) During the August engineering, we noted that the parallactic angle reported in the TSpec GUI was incorrect when compared to JSkyCalc and the IDL program parangle.pro that I found on the web. Omar and Rolo worked on the problem in the intervening time and fixed it. Now, JSkyCalc, parangle.pro, and the TSpec GUI all report a value within 1-2 degrees of each other. I've installed a Blanco-centric version of parangle.pro on observer2 for use.