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CTIO Home > ENR CTIO Blanco 4-m 2022-11-29

ENR CTIO Blanco 4-m 2022-11-29

Date: 
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
Telescope: 
CTIO Blanco 4-m
Submitter: 
Igor Chilingarian
Submitter Email: 
igor.chilingarian@cfa.harvard.edu
Observer Support: 
Sean Points
Night Assistant: 
None
Also Present: 
Victoria Toptun, Fedor Kolganov (students)
Problems: 

1. There are problems with the right side of the COSMOS detector (problems with the electronics). Occasionally, that part of the frame is unusable. There was an attempt to fix it by re-connecting the cables and restarting the controller, but it did not help, just took 30min of time. Example image: n1.64615.fits. Also, there is a strong materess-like pattern at +-15 counts visible in nearly all images (check any slit image or bias).

2. There were several situations with the stuck readout, which required us to restart all the software. It takes a few minutes each time. And we lost several exposures (standard stars) because of that. The last exposure of the night failed for that reason but it was too late to retake it.

3. The alignment procedure takes forever (30-50min for a long slit) and often does not converge. The worst situation is a bright standard star that saturates in the alignment images. There must be a procedure to observe such targets (at least aligning on a particular pixel rather than using the IRAF imexam which does not work).

4. There is a strange drop in flux in the last exposure (HIP38095, n1.64648): either there is a condensation on the glass somewhere or something else (wrong) is going on.

Comments: 

So far, this is my worst experience with a telescope / instrument in over 20 years in 10+ different observatories.

Because of the problems mentioned above, the overall efficiency of observations is very poor. With the initial plan of observing 6 targets during the night, we completed only 2.

High humidity (75-83%) and poor seeing throughout the night.

Conditions: 
General Conditions
Comment: 
None.
1st Quarter
Clouds: 
Clear
Seeing Value: 
1.50
Seeing Variability: 
0.6
Seeing Source: 
The Telescope I used
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
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Program: 
Proposal: 
2022B-674949
Target of Oportunity: 
No
Time Observed: 
0.0
Time Engineering: 
0.5
Time lost technical: 
0.0
Time lost weather: 
0.0
Time lost other: 
3.25
Description: 
Confirmation of intermediate-mass black holes
Primary Investigator: 
Igor Chilingarian
Email: 
igor.chilingarian@cfa.harvard.edu [1]
Institution: 
Center for Astrophysics - Harvard and Smithsonian
Instrument: 
CTIO 4m COSMOS
Organization: 
NOAO
Total Program Time: 
3.75
  • Delete [2]
  • Edit [3]
  • Add [4]
Total Times Time Observed Time Engineering Time lost technical Time lost weather Time lost other Total Program Time
2022-11-29 0.0 0.5 0.0 0.0 3.25 3.75

Source URL (modified on 11/30/2022 - 05:54): http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/content/enr-ctio-blanco-4-m-2022-11-29

Links
[1] mailto:igor.chilingarian@cfa.harvard.edu
[2] http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/field-collection/field-nr-prog/41805/delete?destination=print/content/enr-ctio-blanco-4-m-2022-11-29
[3] http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/field-collection/field-nr-prog/41805/edit?destination=print/content/enr-ctio-blanco-4-m-2022-11-29
[4] http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/field-collection/field-nr-prog/add/node/19736?destination=print/content/enr-ctio-blanco-4-m-2022-11-29