SARA-RM Report Archive

Date	Name	Affiliation	Other Observers	Instrument	Hrs Observed	Hrs Lost	Reason	Observing Program
06/29/2020	Roi Alonso	IAC	--	CCD	8.1	0	No problems to report	WD photometry, empty filter, focus 102612. Seeing increasing from 1 to 3". Everything running smoothly.
06/29/2020	K.Watanabe	FGCU	N.Rimbert	CCD	6.3	0	No problems to report	Blazars. Nothing to report.
06/28/2020	Matthew Knote	Florida Institute of Technology	Keefe Kamp, Stephen Fowler	Andor CCD	10.5	0.5	Equipment Failure	We observed the eclipsing binaries AK Herculis and KIC 8696327 using the Johnson-Cousins B, V, R, and I filters. The focus began the night at 100611 and ended at 99539; seeing was mediocre at the beginning, but became quite abysmal as the night went on, with a FWHM of around 2"; poor quality night. There was streaking after using the handpaddle to move the telescope, which has been true for the past month or so at least; the telescope doesn't settle as quickly as it used to. More critically, the filter wheel stopped moving and caused a 25 minute shutdown while the system was reinitialized. This was aggravating as it came during the most critical part of the night for phase coverage for my system. This problem has occurred a few times in the past and should be investigated.
06/27/2020	Ken Rumstay	VSU	None	CCD camera	9	1	Software/Control PC Issues	AGN monitoring program. The dome stopped moving around sunset; thanks to Peter Mack for solving that. And thanks to Brian Murphy for reminding me how to access the power rack!
06/23/2020	Matthew Knote	Florida Institute of Technology	Keefe Kamp	Andor CCD	10	0	No problems to report	We observed the eclipsing binaries AK Herculis and KIC 8696327 using the Johnson-Cousins B, V, R, and I filters. Focus was adjusted throughout the night, finishing on 99820; seeing was excellent throughout the night. The wavering near zero hour angle that I mentioned a few reports ago has ceased, the first night this month I haven't had that issue. The telescope does seem to overshoot when using the handpaddle, having to track backwards after a move; the telescope didn't have this problem in the past. Also, the interface on the camera computer is somewhat frozen: changing the filter doesn't move the filter on the display (though it does change in actuality), and using the handpaddle shows no movement, but the telescope does move. A reset will likely fix this.
06/22/2020	Steve Gillam	ERAU	None	Andor CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Time series on the roAp star KIC 7582608. The telescope tracking performed as last night except that it did not drift west after crossing the meridian. On closure at the end of the night, the dome GUI reported that the doors were ajar. They closed completely on a second attempt.
06/21/2020	Matthew Knote	Florida Institute of Technology	Keefe Kamp	Andor CCD	9.5	0.5	Software/Control PC Issues	We observed the eclipsing binaries AK Herculis and KIC 8822555 with the Johnson-Cousins B, V, R, and I filters. The focus was adjusted from 98959 to 100133; seeing was excellent throughout the night. Midway through the night, ACE crashed without warning or apparent cause. This caused a half-hour delay. The issue was fixed by restarting the ACE Node Services, but the issue was quite irksome.
06/20/2020	Steve Gillam	ERAU	None	Andor CCD	11	0	Equipment Failure	Time series photometry of the roAp star KIC 7582608. I tracked it continuously all night. Dome was vignetting the telescope. It was off by 10-15 degrees. I homed it. No more vignetting. The telescope tracked very well. As the object rose, the pointing drifted east about 40 arc seconds over about 4 hours. Near the meridian, the star was nailed to the same pixel. In the 2 hours 35 min of tracking west of o the meridian, the star drifted west 20 arc seconds. Th pointing drifted no more than 1 arc second in declination. over the whole night.
06/19/2020	Steve Gillam	ERAU	None	Andor CCD	11 hoiurs	0	Software/Control PC Issues	Microvariable stars The dome rotation stopped at the end of the night. I cycled the dome drive as described in the readme doc. and rotation was restored. From time-to-time, the dome GUI indicated that it was raining and was going to perform an automatic rain shutdown. when it was not raining. It did not automatically shut the dome either. Also, the mirror cover GUI showed "Fault". (I know the covers are stuck open.) I stopped and restarted the ACE Node services and recycled the control cabinet power per the instructions in the readme. The mirror cover fault indication persists.
06/18/2020	Matthew Knote	Florida Institute of Technology	Keefe Kamp	Andor CCD	10	0	No problems to report	We observed the eclipsing binaries AK Herculis and KIC 8696327. We observed using the Johnson-Cousins B, V, R, and I filters. The focus began at 98133 (right where I left it last night) and ended at 97949. Seeing was quite good (much improved over last night), with a typical FWHM of ~0.8". When we started up, the Camera Power on the Warm Dome PDU was off, which was quite odd since it was on when I left the telescope yesterday morning. We noticed that the bias level was raised quite significantly over last night; with director Dr. Murphy's help, we diagnosed the problem as due to the readout speed under instrument setup had been set to fastest readout; setting it to 1 MHz reduced the bias level by an order of magnitude. When my target got to an hour angle of about +1, I noticed that the telescope would periodically "glitch," moving to a different position (maybe 30" away) and back again, producing dumbbell shaped stars. The problem was intermittent; 10 minutes could go by without it happening, and then it would happen three images in a row. I watched the MaxNET status on the telescope computer but didn't notice anything amiss when this occurred. It may be related to the streaking I see when I take an exposure only a second or two after slewing the telescope, an issue RM didn't have in the past. This may be something worth looking into.
06/17/2020	Matthew Knote	Florida Institute of Technology	Keefe Kamp	Andor CCD	9	0	No problems to report	We observed the eclipsing binary systems AK Herculis and KIC 8822555. We observed using the Johnson-Cousins B, V, R, and I filters. Focus began the night at 97987 and ended at 98133; seeing was mediocre, with a FWHM getting not much below 1". We did not activate the Andor cooler using the JKT DOME PDU, but the images appeared fine and the headers indicate that the camera was cooled to -96C; is this procedure still required, or is the cooler always active now?
06/14/2020	Van Hamme	FIU	Samec & Faulkner	1 m	8 hours	none	No problems to report	observations of interacting eclipsing binaries. scope is in great shape.