SARA-RM Report Archive

Date	Name	Affiliation	Other Observers	Instrument	Hrs Observed	Hrs Lost	Reason	Observing Program
08/31/2020	William Keel	University of Alabama	2 cats	Andor CCD	8	1	Software/Control PC Issues	Guider tests, nebulae. One drive-shutdown instance wiped out an hour-long exposure. Guider mostly functioned well; there are still instances when it takes a long time to engage (up to 30 minutes judging by the plots). Updated guider instructions and focal-plane map to come. For signing in to Dropbox with email address, it may help that a Spanish keyboard layout uses ctl-alt-2 for the @ symbol. Dome showed closed at night's end with no problems.
08/30/2020	William Keel	University of Alabama	2 cats	Andor CCD	6	1	Software/Control PC Issues	Guider testing. Telescope got so lost during a node server.connector client restart that it thought it was below the pole - called Peter to straighten that out. Guider worked well on 30- and 60-minute exposures for stars peaking above 1000 counts. X-stage for guide camera works now in positions 0-6; guider focus is near 1000. Dome shows closed at end of night, unlike previous night's problems.
08/26/2020	Keefe Kamp	Florida Tech	Saida Caballero	CCD	0	8	Other	Aerosol levels at too high to open. Smoke/dust.
08/24/2020	William Keel	University of Alabama	2 cats	Andor CCD	0	9	Other	Closed due to wildfire downslope. And 2020.
08/23/2020	Keefe Kamp	Florida Tech	Saida Caballero, Minh Le	CCD	4	6	Other	Photometric Observations of TZ Lyr. Problems Occurred: Telescope Stopped tracking at an HA of 2 after a restart the dome's azimuth was not aligning with the telescope. I recycled power to the azimuth controls; however, I then had to shut down due to fire and was not able to see if that corrected the issue.
08/22/2020	Ross Silver	Clemson University	Dieter Hartmann, Yong Sheng	ORM	7	2.5	Software/Control PC Issues	Obsering blazars to calculate photometric redshifts. Multiple times throughout the night, the telescope lost tracking. Sometimes this happened 10 minutes into an exposure, sometimes 40 minutes in. When trying to fix this, the node service lagged shutting down for about 30 minutes but eventually fixed itself. This problem only occurred once during our 4 restarts.
08/22/2020	James Webb	Florida International University	Sparkle	CCD camera	7	3	Clouds	Blazar microvariability, VRI photometry of BL Lac
08/19/2020	Judi Provencal	University of Delaware	none	Andor	7	0	No problems to report	Imaging for Observational Astronomy student projects for Fall 2020, since the class will be unable to go to Mt. Cuba Observatory. Only minor issue tonight - telescope pointing was a little off in RA.
08/18/2020	William Keel	University of Alabama	2 cats	Andor CCD	8.5	0.5	Software/Control PC Issues	Dead quasar survey, H II regions, backlit galaxies. One drive shutdown (3h30 W +65). EW offset commands still go backwards. Coordinate synch timed out - does this work?
08/16/2020	Meena Rajagopal	Clemson University	Dr. D. Hartmann	CCD	~6	~4	Other	BLLs. Problem with filter wheel failing mid-exposure. Also, dusty night.
08/15/2020	Martha A. Leake	Valdosta State University	none	Andor Camera	0	8	Other	Dust, as measured in the TNG, was 24.4 and increased to 31.4 before 18:00 GMT,at RM and stayed about 34 ug/m3 or more until 23:45 UR, about sixr hours later. The NOT telescope labeled this "Dusty" 34.3 > 20 um/m3. We have discussed this before, but I don't know what the reasonable limit is. The dust measurements are made about once per hour, and at 7:45 pm (EDT) is 33.09. I'll cede the rest of the night and hope that dust diminishes so that someone can use the night.
08/12/2020	Roi Alonso	IAC	nope	CCD	6	1	Equipment Failure	WDs, empty filter, focus 102559. Second part of the night needed a lot of HA resets, as the telescope stopped tracking. Close to morning twilight, this happened every few minutes, making observations quite annoying. Stopped earlier for this reason.