SARA-CT Report Archive

Date	Name	Affiliation	Other Observers	Instrument	Hours Observed	Hours Lost	Reason	Observing Program
02/24/2021	Saida Caballero	FIT	Kamp, Klare, Le, Zamora	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Class project for creating an Exposure time calculator. No problems to report. CCD was back online after having stopped when aborted the night before.
02/23/2021	Saida Caballero	FIT	Kamp	CCD	10	0	Software/Control PC Issues	Starting taking darks before the end of the night and had to abort the observations for morning flats. Followed the restart instructions for the camera (even restarted both computers) and was not able to get the camera back online. Message is "Exposure start failed."
02/20/2021	Amy J Lovell	Agnes Scott College		CCD	6	5.5	Equipment Failure	Started okay, but then camera disconnected, required ACE intervention. Once restored, no problems to report.
02/19/2021	Núria Torres-Albà	Clemson University	Yong, Alex, Dieter	SARA CT	7	1	Software/Control PC Issues	Clemson University blazar observations Problems: Sequence tool got stuck and we had to restart ace control software
02/17/2021	Amy Lovell	Agnes Scott	Kimbarl, King, Krahm, Nguyen	CCD	9.5	0	No problems to report	A few of the images had some streaks of interrupted tracking, otherwise all was well.
02/15/2021	Martha Leake	Valdosta State University	Students in two classes observed	FLI Cam	10.5	0.3	Equipment Failure	Demonstration objects and asteroids (light curves). Most everything worked well, but a few glitches. On last asteroid in the 12:54 RA, -9 17 Dec (meridian area), a 240 second exposure had short streaks--a slippage? This short streak was repeated on each subsequent frame--not as if tracking stopped--it was engaged (and not red), but perhaps a slip. Two slews were so long I used the Stop button, then went to the object without problem. One of these was adjusting HA to 00:00 for the final parking at +15 deg Dec. After the streaks I moved to zenith park, tested a no-tracking streak of different lengths, and then tracked (aimed near zenith) and tracked the area. No problems appeared. I expected high humidity tonight but it did not exceed 72% (at start). Early on, noted ds9 wasn't displaying data (just image); Tried the XPA. Closed ds9, started Ace connector on camera computer, followed by reopening ds9 and using the telescope computer to take pictures. This worked (and is in the manual). Focusing poor, seeing not the 0.6 " advertised on Tololo conditions. Remembered to disconnect vpn link when done.
02/14/2021	Ross Silver	Clemson University	Dieter Hartmann	CCD	0	9	Equipment Failure	Photometric redshifts of BL Lacs.
02/12/2021	Martha Leake	Valdosta State University	Logan Spooner	FLI Cam10.7	10.7	0	No problems to report	Student targets (M92, LMC) and asteroids 445 Edna and 13093 Wolfgangpauli. Parked telescope at HA = 00:00 and Dec = +15. NIce weather. No problems other than busy day just prior to run.
02/10/2021	William Keel	University of Alabama	3 cats	FLI CCD	8.5	0	No problems to report	Merging and backlit galaxies. Focus 132500, guider focus 0. Used only filter wheel 1 with no problems. When moving to park at dec +30, ACE control gave error message about faulty dec encoder. Compared to KP, CT computer gave UT 22 seconds slow (and KP agreed with cellphone time to a second or so).
02/08/2021	James Raymond Webb	Florida International University	Viviana Arroyave, Keslo Estil	CCD	6	0	No problems to report	Blazar monitoring and imaging galaxies
02/07/2021	Yong Sheng	Clemson University	Meenakshi Rajagopal	SARA CT	0	10	Software/Control PC Issues	Study BL Lacs Problem: Can't use the filters in wheel 2, the filter options are in grey
02/06/2021	Ken Rumstay	Valdosta State University	None	CCD camera	0	10	Equipment Failure	The #1 filter wheel is not operating, as noted by Amy Lovell last night.
02/05/2021	Amy Lovell	Agnes Scott College	none	CCD	2.5	8	Equipment Failure	Filter Wheel 1 is unresponsive: INIT Wheel 1 just continually displays "Finding HOME for Wheel 1" and never returns. All filters in Wheel 1 are grey. The filter wheel window also persists after closing the Science Camera. Any attempt to fool the wheel by selecting a filter in the sequence tool is similarly met with no response. The camera reset procedure (from the text file on the desktop) does not fix this, whether with the Observations window or the whole ACE software. Reboot of either or both computers in any order doesn't fix. After the resets, etc, the camera will expose and write an image, with "---" in the FILTER field, but the filter may have been stuck on B or between B and V.
02/04/2021	William Keel	University of Alabama	3 cats	FLI CCD	8.5	0	No problems to report	Focus 133000; Guider focus 0. Near the meridian at dec -69, there were frequent instances of the telescope bobbing N-S by 5” or so that the guider took 5 minutes to correct. After recent nights, I kept closer track of the CD temperature and took multiple darks during the night to see whether hot pixels are really changing that fast. Two darks during twilight were suspiciously bright - light may be leaking around the shutter.
02/04/2021	Walter Van Hamme	FIU	Samec	FLI	8	0	No problems to report	All went well. Observations on EI Oct and WISEJ051352.5-170113. The network did kick me out 20 or so times but I was able to easily connect again.