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Date | Name | Other Observers | Instrument | Hours Observed | Hours Lost | Reason | Observing Program |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
02/05/2023 | Priya Gokuldass | None | CCD | 2 | 3 | Clouds | ULGRB host galaxies observation. Was cloudy at the beginning. |
02/04/2023 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 0 | 8 | Clouds | Clouds all night |
01/26/2023 | Martha A. Leake | Tools class of 10 for 2 h, then none | Arc Camera | 6 | 3 | Connection Issues | Asteroid photometry after class. Unable to access the camera computer. Help from Todd, Ken and Yong Sheng (and Bill). Todd power cycled the camera computer and it responded to radmin. I activated connector client and the telescope PC was able to send images to the camera PC. No problems after that. Thank you to all. |
01/25/2023 | William Keel | 2 cats | Andor CCD | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Merging galaxies, LMC H II regions. Focus 128500, guider focus 8900. Reset guider parameters. |
01/24/2023 | Scott Joffre | Hartmann | CCD | 4 | null | Software/Control PC Issues | Had tracking/slewing issues - after 1-2 300s observations. Would slew away and slew back, correcting for only a short time.
May also have had some focus issues in conjunction, became difficult to correct for both. |
01/21/2023 | Ken Rumstay | Apollo the cat | Andor camera | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | AGN observations.
Telescope tracking very good. Telescope tends to point north of target by varying amounts (depending on declination) after slewing. |
01/20/2023 | jim webb | none | ccd | 4 | 0 | No problems to report | Blazars monitoring, Stars of Star Trek, tarantula nebula |
01/17/2023 | Isaiah Cox | Yong Sheng, Dieter Hartmann | Andor CCD | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Clemson blazar study |
01/14/2023 | Priya Gokuldass | None | CCD | 8.3 | 0 | No problems to report | ultra long GRB host galaxy observation. |
01/13/2023 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartmann | Andor CCD griz | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Clemson blazar study. |
01/12/2023 | Priya Gokuldass | None | CCD | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | ultra long GRB host galaxy observation. Had initial connection issues for few minutes. |
01/04/2023 | William Keel | 2 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 7 | 2 | Equipment Failure | LMC str-forming regions. Focus 127000, guide focus 8900. Drive shut down once near 0H -70. Had several connection interruptions (possibly local), decided to shut down after recovering from one 30m before twilight for safety. |
12/29/2022 | William Keel | 2 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Calm midsummer night. Merging galaxies outside Legacy Survey coverage. Focus 127600, guider focus 9330. One incidence of guider running away to SW, near 3h30 E -26. Internal stray light still present. CCD computer still accessible only via RAdmin, so using Mac I had to connect to telescope computer with VNC and the use RAdmin from there. |
12/27/2022 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartmann | Andor griz | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Clemson blazar study |
12/24/2022 | Isaiah Cox | Yong Sheng, Dieter Hartmann | Andor CCD | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Blazars |
12/13/2022 | Van Hamme | Samec | CCD | 10 | 1 | Equipment Failure | Observations of Eclipsing Interactive Binaries. WISE042533.6., TYC6462 195 1. |
12/13/2022 | Van Hamme | Samec | CCD | 11 | 0 | No problems to report | Observations of Eclipsing Interactive Binaries. WISE042533.6., TYC6462 195 1. |
12/17/2022 | Martha Leake | none | New Intel NUCExposure start failed | 0 | 7 | Equipment Failure | Asteroid light curve. New equipment just installed and I was unable to have a complete readout and reset without the message "Exposure start failed." Next exposure prevented, countdown of remaining seconds not running. Closing and Opening the Operating menu id not solve the problem. Also, was unable to save images and unclear about latest image storage drive (D, Z, or "image storage (\\ISP address)). No files showed up, binning uncertain. Cause could lie in guider menu or connection of other CCD on menu. Seemed that de-interlace choice changed. Peter left message for help to which I replied. Closed down, never opened. |
12/14/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 7 | 0 | No problems to report | Standard Stars, Exoplanet |
12/03/2022 | Laina Tallman Bogusta | N/A | N/A | 11 | 0 | No problems to report | Super clear night. Got some solid data. Everything was working properly although when I tried to about an exposure, the telescope computer seemed to freeze? I was done anyways so I logged out and logged back into the system and closed everything up. Great night. |
12/04/2022 | Jacob R. Romeo | Dr. Stephen Gillan | ANDOR | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Observations went smooth for the imaging of star HD45698 (a field roAp), I hit abort on accident in the beginning so had to cycle everything, besides that nothing to complain about! Got 1300 exposures, 20 seconds each, at a median of 1.2 Mil counts for Intensity and 20k for Source. No cloud coverage with an average humidity of 40% and 1 mph winds! Beautiful night. |
12/02/2022 | Scott Joffre | Yong Sheng, D. Hartmann | CT | 9.5 | 0.5 | Equipment Failure | Clemson University Blazar observation program
Issue with auto-tracking failing to be calibrated correctly after a few runs. Seems to correct if point away to a different location and then point back. |
12/01/2022 | Ken Rumstay | Apollo the cat | Andor CCD | 9.5 | 0 | No problems to report | AGN observations. As noted previously, the telescope points 1-2 arcminutes north of target after slewing. |
11/30/2022 | Kurtis Williams | none | Andor | 0 | 10 | Other | Unable to observe due to inflexible class and laboratory duties; night put up on sara-tech at the last minute and there were no takers. |
11/29/2022 | Kurtis Williams | none | Andor | 0 | 10 | Other | Forgot about the night despite having this on my calendar.. I'm embarrassed. Sorry. |
11/28/2022 | William Keel | 2 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 7.5 | 0 | No problems to report | Artemis, Didymos, SMC, search for NEA Scout. Focus 128500. Guider didn't have enough authority in some parts of sky. |
11/27/2022 | Martha A. Leake | none | ARC | null | 0 | No problems to report | Asteroid photometry for light curves. Weather was great. |
11/17/2022 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD | 8.5 | 0 | No problems to report | Galaxies. Focus 127500, guide focus 1000. |
11/14/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 7 | 0 | No problems to report | Exoplanet |
11/13/2022 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartmann | Andor griz | 6 | 4 | Clouds | There were a lot of clouds for the first half of the night.
I also noticed that there was an out-of-focus problem. |
11/09/2022 | Tomomi Otani | None | CCD | 7 | 1 | Clouds | Photometry time series. Everything was working well. |
11/01/2022 | VanHamme | Samec | photometer | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | Observations of interacting binaries. Wise042533.0
Samec |
10/28/2022 | Tomomi Otani | Erin Abraham, Adrian Moraga | CCD | 5 | 0 | No problems to report | Public Outreach. Great night with no problem. |
10/27/2022 | William Keel | Class | Andor CCD #2 | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Class demo, galaxies. Focus 126600, guide focus 1000. Guiding had apparent hysteresis (did not keep up with drifts), or gave sawtooth pattern in RA, in some parts of the sky. |
10/25/2022 | William Keel | AY20 class | Andor CCD #2 | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Class demo, star clusters, galaxies, nebulae. Focus 125700 (changed around the sky), guider focus +1000. |
10/22/2022 | Matt Wood | NA | CCD | 0 | 12 | Software/Control PC Issues | Connection Client not working on SARA CAM. Without this, time of exposure start is not written to FITS header, so I can't use the data for time series. I will email sara-tech to see if anybody needs imaging data and doesn't care about time precision. |
10/21/2022 | Matt Wood | None | CCD | 0 | 12 | Software/Control PC Issues | Time series photometry of intermediate polars.
First time on CTIO in a long time. Got things going with a little help from Brian and Kurtis and Todd. DS9 was not displaying images, but I managed. At about 06:00 UT I realized that the exposure start time was not being written to FITS headers, so data are basically useless. The Connector Client is not working on Camera computer. It will not start - crashes every time. I restarted the computer and that did not help. I did a reboot from the PDU, and that did not help. Tried again, and now I can't even get SARACAM back in VNC. So I'm shutting down for the night. It was a beautiful night with reported sub-arcsecond seeing.
It would be helpful to have instructions on how to get things going again on the desktop or website. Nowhere could I find the instructions for how to restart everything from scratch. Such a document would be useful to have on the desktop.
Why is "other observers" a required field of this form? (yes, I'm grumpy). |
10/20/2022 | Kyle Pellegrin | N/A | CCD | 3.5 | 0 | No problems to report | Good conditions at the observatory. |
10/19/2022 | Lilyanne Pepe, Jacob Romeo | Stephen Gillam | ARK | 0 | 3.5 | Connection Issues | Camera GUI would not connect, tried restarting NODE service multiple times , restarted both computers, recycled ARK camera power and camera computer and eventually lost VPN connection to the camera computer in the process.
roAp research |
10/14/2022 | Martha Leake | none | Andor | 10.5 | 0 | No problems to report | Great weather and conditions; all equipment worked. Pointing a bit north of center as Ken noted. |
10/13/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | asteroid photometry
|
10/13/2022 | Lilyanne Pepe, Divyeshwari Vansadia | Steve Gillam | ARC Camera | 8.5 | 0 | No problems to report | The telescope computer was a little slow starting up, but after the first 30 minutes, there were no issues. Weather was fantastic and collected lots of data!
roAp research team |
10/10/2022 | Gary Henson | none | Andor CCD | 6.5 | 0 | No problems to report | Asteroid light curve, no problems all systems working fine. |
10/08/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 6 | 0 | No problems to report | Exoplanet. |
10/03/2022 | Todd Hillwig | None | Andor CCD | 8.5 | 1.5 | No problems to report | photometric monitoring of WD binaries. Bright moon, thin clouds and poor seeing early on. Took the night from someone else (thanks Ted) late in the day and had a few already scheduled things that kept me from using a few hours of the night. |
10/02/2022 | Priya Gokuldass | None | CCD | 2 | 3 | Connection Issues | Ultra long GRB host galaxy observation. The air mass was high during the initial hours of observation and high level clouds. The connection to the computers got disconnected for few minutes while observing. |
09/29/2022 | William Keel | 2 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 7 | 0 | No problems to report | Galaxies, Didymos dust trails. Focus 126300. At one point telescope control system crashed but left a frozen window, confusing me mightily until I sent CTL-ALT-DEL from VNC and made everything refresh. At one point near 4h W -77, guider could not keep up with NS daifts (or didn't have the control authority against backlash to do so?) |
09/28/2022 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartmann | Andor CCD griz | 11 | 0 | No problems to report | Blazar study at Clemson University |
09/27/2022 | Todd Hillwig | None | Andor CCD | 3 | 7 | Clouds | Photometric monitoring of hot WDs. Clouds most of the night. |
09/24/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 6 | 3 | Clouds | cery cloudy at beginning of the night, but it cleared up late |
09/21/2022 | Ken Rumstay | Apollo the cat | CCD camera | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | AGN monitoring program
Telescope points north of target after slewing, by as much as three arcminutes (amount varies with hour angle). |
09/19/2022 | James Webb | none | CCD | 0 | 10 | Equipment Failure | Blazar Microvariability and star of Star Trek
Informed telescope was down , but later on after too late it became available. Could not at that time log in to use it. Should be good now. |
09/14/2022 | Steve Gillam | Lilyanna Pepe, Jacob Romeo, Laina Talman-Bogusta | Andor Camera | 0 | 7 | Equipment Failure | rOAp stars.
At the beggining of the night, I could not connect to Telescope computer. I power-cycled it. And it is now working and I can access the TCS.
I cannot connect to the Andor camera.
I to connect to the guider camera. This failed. I then tried stopping and starting the camera ACE node service. Didn’t fix the connection to the camera. I then tried closing and reselecting the main camera service. The ACE connector client failed. This likely indicates that it cannot connect to the camera. This probably requires a restart of the camera and a full ACE services restart. The failed guide cam together with this failure suggests something systemic is wrong.
I power-cycled the camera. This did not restore the connection to the ACE connector client.
I then tried to power-cycle the camera computer because the broken ACE connector client remained that way, even after stopping and starting the ACE node service. It appears that the camera computer would not reboot completely as I cannot connect to it.
|
09/02/2022 | Priya Gokuldass | None | CCD | 0 | 5 | Equipment Failure | Telescope (camera) is not operational at the moment. |
09/01/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 0 | 11 | Equipment Failure | CCD still kaputt |
08/31/2022 | Priya Gokuldass | None | CCD | 0 | 5 | Equipment Failure | Telescope (camera) is not operational at the moment. |
08/29/2022 | Ross Silver | Dieter Hartmann | CCD | 0 | 10 | Equipment Failure | Telescope is not operational at the moment. |
08/26/2022 | James Webb | Jonathon Barata | CCD | 0 | 8 | Connection Issues | Stars f Star Trek, blazar microvariability
My home computer with VPM wouldn't connect, it is old and fickle. Couldn't log in. I wasn't sure of the other problems at CTIO were fixed anyway. |
08/20/2022 | Martha Leake | none | Andor | 0 | 11 | Equipment Failure | No camera at present. From Todd on Friday "Fault in camera connection at SARA-CT, ...part being shipped...estimated several days to a week" (paraphrased). No observing tonight. (Weather was also turning cloudy later.) |
08/16/2022 | Ross Silver | Dieter Hartmann | CCD | 0 | 10 | Equipment Failure | I could not observe due to issues with the telescope. |
08/17/2022 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartmann | Andor CCD griz | 0 | 12 | Equipment Failure | The Andor camera and the QSI camera are not working |
08/15/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 0 | 8 | Equipment Failure | M31. CCD would not download images so restarted everything-- telescope limit warnings began flashing when everything came back up, even though no commands had been sent to the telescope. |
08/11/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 7 | 0 | Other | Autofocuser would not operate correctly-- everything else worked well. |
08/11/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 0 | 5 | Equipment Failure | Camera would not download images. Cloudy all night so it ended up not being a a usable night anyway. |
08/06/2022 | Alex | Dieter | CCD | 0 | 10 | Humidity | Clemson Blazar Photo-z measurement program.
High humidity and clouds so did not observe
|
08/03/2022 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 11.5 | 0 | No problems to report | Transient night - a quilt of asteroids, a comet, supernovae, planets, and the odd filler galaxy. CCD computer sometimes had such poor connection that VNC went down to "low" screen quality, although Dropbox uploads from it stayed very fast. Focus 125000, guider focus 0. Guiding in some parts of the sky acted as if it had little control authority. |
08/01/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 10 | 1 | Clouds | High Cirrus and rather poor seeing, but no technical problems to report.
Asteroid photometry |
07/26/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 8 | 3 | Clouds | intermittent clouds, not sure how good data will be. Else no problems to report |
07/25/2022 | Kurtis Williams | none | Andor | 0 | 14 | Snow | Observatory closed due to snowstorm and subsequent power failure |
07/24/2022 | Kurtis Williams | none | Andor | 0 | 14 | Snow | Observatory closed due to snowstorm and subsequent power failure |
07/19/2022 | Priya Gokuldass | None | CCD | 0 | 5 | Snow | Didn't observe due to the snow storm on Friday night and power failure. |
07/18/2022 | Ken Rumstay | None | CCD | 0 | 10 | Snow | Unable to observe as a result of Friday's snowstorm. |
07/12/2022 | William Keel | public event | Andor CCD #2 | 4 | 0 | No problems to report | Public program: NGC 3132, JWST, Focus 12580. |
07/09/2022 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartmann | CT griz | 1 | 11 | Humidity | Program: Clemson University blazar study
Problems: the humidity > 80%. Can't observe at all. But I took bias and darks since they can be done with dome closed |
07/07/2022 | Kent Montgomery | Mamosa Mohoto | CCD | 0 | 8 | Clouds | Asteroid Photometry |
07/05/2022 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 5 | 7 | Clouds | Galaxies, comet. Increasing cirrus wiped out later part of the night. Focus 126700. Connection was slow, but Dropbox uploads from the CCD computer were extraordinarily slow (especially when trying to do multiple files - makes me wonder about a browser version issue). I could usually only get a single file at a time uploaded without a timeout. |
07/03/2022 | Robert Berrington | none | arc | 12 | 0 | No problems to report | Short period variable stars. |
06/29/2022 | Núria Torres-Albà | Dieter Hartmann | SARA CT | 11 | 0 | No problems to report | Clemson University high-z blazar observations.
No problems to report. |
06/29/2022 | Kent Montgomery | Mamosa Mohoto | CCD | 7 | 1 | Equipment Failure | For the second night in a row the declination limit came on at the beginning of the night so the telescope would not slew in declination. The problem was resolved by a text to Todd and someone from ACE logging in to override it. This needs to be fixed whether mechanical or software related because I expect it will continue to happen every night. |
06/28/2022 | Kent Montgomery | Mamosa Mohoto | CCD | 7.5 | 1.5 | Software/Control PC Issues | At the beginning of the night the telescope wouldn't slew in declination. The north limit had been triggered even though the telescope was at a declination of -3 degrees. After a call to Todd, Brian got on and overrode the limit switch so we could observe the rest of the night. Thanks to both of them. |
06/26/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 0 | 11 | Clouds | clouds, never opened |
06/25/2022 | Martha Leake | none | Andor | 6 | 6 | Clouds | Asteroids and galaxy. Connection problem with SARA telescope solved by Todd (thank you). Completed biases and darks while waiting for cirrostratus clouds and began at 11 pm. Filter menu is touchy, but I believe it is correct. Moving to stow position was slow at the lock stage. Vicuna forecast "soggier" than conditions at CTIO. |
06/23/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 0 | 11 | Clouds | clouds, never opened |
06/21/2022 | Alex | Dieter | Andor CCD | 0 | 11 | Humidity | Clemson Blazar Photo-z measurement program. Bad weather. Humidity, clouds, and snow throughout the night |
06/20/2022 | Robert Berrington | none | arc | 2 | 10 | Clouds | Short Period variable star program. Lost several hours due to clouds. |
06/19/2022 | Robert Berrington | none | arc | 0 | 12 | Clouds | Short period variable stars. Lost evening due to high clouds. |
06/17/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 3 | 7 | Clouds | Asteroids. |
06/15/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 7 | 0 | No problems to report | Asteroid, Novae |
06/13/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 1 | 10 | Clouds | Asteroid. No mechanical issues, but clouds the whole night so no data. |
06/12/2022 | Xianming Han | Josh Wanninger | CCD | 9 | 2.5 | Clouds | eclipsing binary |
06/11/2022 | Xianming Han | Josh Wanninger | CCD | 11 | 0 | No problems to report | eclipsing binary |
06/10/2022 | Xianming Han | Josh Wanninger | CCD | 11 | 0 | No problems to report | eclipsing binary |
06/09/2022 | Xianming Han | Josh Wanninger | CCD | 10 | 0.5 | Equipment Failure | telescope could not slew properly. ACE helped found a temporary fix. |
06/09/2022 | Stephen Levine | N/A | Andor Camera | 0 | 10 | Equipment Failure | Outer Solar System astrometry program.
Telescope locked a Dec limit on first slew. I thought it was reasonably above the nominal pointing limits, but apparently not. I would have expected a possible E limit, if anything. Once the Dec limit was set, it would not unset. The telescope was mobile in E/W, but no N/S motion. Dec is at about -00:12. If you bring up the hand paddle and try a manual move, the direction of the button push changes the Dec limit to that direction (ie, push S button, the read back registers Dec Limit S). Closed up.
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06/07/2022 | Otani | Julia Clark, Adrian Moraga | Andor CCD | 6 | 4 | Software/Control PC Issues | Student observation. Photometry time series.
The telescope control panel showed the DEC reached both the N and S limit and stopped slewing. The touch panel did not work.
We rebooted the ACE and rebooted the telescope PC.
When I had the similar issue before, I was suggested to move the telescope to -4h and -89 degrees, then move it over to +4 and -75 degrees. We tried that too but nothing worked, so we ended the observation. |
06/06/2022 | Otani | Adrian Moraga, Julia Clark | CCD | 9 | 1 | Software/Control PC Issues | Hot subdwarf photometry time series.
CCD camera disconnected once. The regular procedure fixed the issue. |
05/31/2022 | Yong Sheng | Scott Joffre, Dieter Hartmann | CT griz | 1 | 9 | Clouds | Too cloudy. Only took bias and darks. |
05/08/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | Noticed that I forgot to send a report for this night, sorry |
05/28/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 0 | 11 | Clouds | clouds, never opened |
05/27/2022 | Todd Hillwig | None | Andor CCD | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | PN central stars |
05/26/2022 | Xianming Han | Josh Wanninger | CCD | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | eclipsing binary |
05/24/2022 | Ken Rumstay | None | CCD camera | 11 | 0 | No problems to report | AGN photometry. Increasing clouds towards dawn. |
05/23/2022 | James Webb | none | CCD | 0 | 10 | Other | Observing Star Trek stars in southern hemisphere and blazar microvariability. Computer with VPN wouldn't boot so I couldn't log onto the telescope. Put the night up for grabs but don't think anyone took it.
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05/21/2022 | Gary Henson | Rutherford | Andor CCD | 7.5 | 0 | No problems to report | Asteroid Light Curve
At end of run, with telescope at ~35 deg altitude to NW, oscillation in Dec tracking occurred. Turned tracking off/back on and was stable after that until target down to ~30 deg in altitude. |
05/20/2022 | Ken Rumstay | None | CCD camera | 1 | 10 | Clouds | Complete cloud cover at start of night. Observed MCG 06-30-15 during a partial opening*, then closed dome when clouds rolled in again.
*I'm n ot confident the images are usable. |
05/17/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | Asteroid. |
05/16/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | Asteroid. No problems. |
05/15/2022 | Nayra Rodriguez Eugenio | Irene Puerto | Andor CCD | 5 | 0 | No problems to report | Crater timings during lunar eclipse |
05/14/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Asteroid. No problems. |
05/12/2022 | Ross Silver | Dieter, Yong | CCD | 10 | 1 | Clouds | Observing photometric redshift of blazars |
05/07/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 0 | 11 | Clouds | Clouds --never opened |
05/06/2022 | Walter Van Hamme | Samec | CCD | null | 0 | No problems to report | Observations of interacting eclipsing binaries, ASASSN-V J113943.95-611732.1 and GSC 5149.2845. |
05/04/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 10.5 | 0.5 | Software/Control PC Issues | There seems to be a light on in the dome. I do not know where to switch it off.
The image -D-drive on the camera PC is full. I did not receive a warning it just wrote empty files to disk. They of course displayed normally in DS9 and it took me a while to notice the problem. I was able to clear some old files from a colleague. |
05/03/2022 | Watanabe | N.Rimbert | CCD | 6 | 0 | No problems to report | Blazars |
05/02/2022 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 9.5 | 0 | Software/Control PC Issues | AGN, SN, nebulae. Guider corrections were not being received by telescope control (numbers appear on CCD computer but all zeros on telescope computer). Focus 126300, guider focus 9000. |
04/26/2022 | Stephen Levine | N/A | Andor Camera | 5 | 0 | No problems to report | Outer solar system astrometry. |
04/27/2022 | Stephen Levine | N/A | Andor camera | 5 | 0 | No problems to report | Outer solar system astrometry. |
04/25/2022 | Stephen Levine | N/A | Andor Camera | 5 | 0 | No problems to report | Outer solar system astrometry. |
04/22/2022 | Todd Hillwig | None | Andor CCD | 10 | 0 | Other | A lot of E-W telescope motion/drifting throughout the night. Also one case of large N-S oscillations for about 20 minutes at Azimuth 77 degrees and Altitude 48 degrees. Also, the guider was not sending corrections to the telescope. |
04/17/2022 | Ted von Hippel | Alondra Valentin-Torres, Ryan Bowen | imaging | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | student projects |
04/21/2022 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartmann | CT griz | 11 | 0 | No problems to report | Clemson University blazar study.
The night went pretty smoothly, no issue to report |
04/13/2022 | Todd Hillwig | None. | Andor CCD | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | Student Projects for the first half of the night, PN central star observations the second half. |
04/10/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 0 | 11 | Equipment Failure | Asteroid. When I first logged on, the CCD camera would not respond to commands-- actually, it would appear that it was working, but not actually take any images. After four restarts of the CCD computer it begin operating correctly. I restarted the telescope computer along-side the CCD computer and when it came back up, many of the control windows were blank. Several restarts later, the controls were all back and everything except one thing appeared to function-- that one thing was the telescope pointing. The telescope would accept commands to slew to a particular area, but would not actually slew to the new location-- it stayed where it was, with "slewing" never disappearing from the control window. The hand paddle would not move the telescope either. Several more restarts had no effect so I closed up. |
04/08/2022 | Van Hamme | Samec | CCD | 11 | 1 | Equipment Failure | Drive problems on first start up. ACE rapidly fixed them. 625 observations on 2 interacting binaries. Beautiful night. No airmass issues. |
04/08/2022 | Van Hamme | Samec | CCD | 12 | null | Equipment Failure | Drive problems fixed rapidly by ACE. All went well afterwards, some 634 observations of 2 interacting binaries. No airmass problems. |
04/07/2022 | Ken Rumstay | None | CCD | 5 | 2 | Connection Issues | Was observing from home; my Internet connection failed just before sunset at CTIO. Relocated to the university and resumed observing.
All worked fine until about 12:30 am EDT. While slewing to a target the N and W limits turned red, even though the telescope was east of the meridian. I was able to close the mirror covers and the dome, but could not budge the telescope. Restarting ACE and the telescope computer did not help.
I've informed Peter Mack and Brian Blondell of the problem. |
04/05/2022 | Judi Provencal | DAS | Andor | 6 | 0 | No problems to report | Observed multiple open clusters and nebulae for DAS members. |
04/04/2022 | Todd Hillwig | None. | Andor CCD | 0 | 10 | Software/Control PC Issues | Camera computer non-responsive. Difficulty contacting telops. They should be on it today. |
04/03/2022 | Stephen Gillam | Leila Alamos, Lilyanne Pepe | Andor Camera | 0 | 10 | Equipment Failure | ROAp stars.
The camera computer remained incommunicado. So, we finished up at 8:30 pm. |
04/02/2022 | Stephen Gillam | Leila Alamos, Kiara Richardson | Andor Camera | 2 | 8 | Software/Control PC Issues | ROAp stars.
Around midnight, the camera stopped working. We restarted the ACE node service seven times. The camera remained inoperable. Then, the TCS reported that the encoder had failed. We completed the procedure to reset the DIO96 board (Shutting down the Tele. computer and power-cycling the tele computer and ACE control cabinet.) The camera was still not connecting. We then tried to power cycle the camera and the camera computer. using the APC switch rack. The camera computer did not come up again. We were unable to connect to it. |
03/25/2022 | Xianming Han | none | CCD | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | eclipsing binary |
03/31/2022 | Priya Gokuldass | Kamp | CCD | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | Be stars, Multiplicity survey and TESS follow-up. We had no problem during the hours of observation. |
03/25/2022 | Walter Van Hamme | sAMEC | ccd | 0 | 10 | Connection Issues | Inability to connect since Win10 computers cannot connect to CTIO through VPN at present. We gave time tonight to another observer. |
03/24/2022 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Merging galaxies. Focus 128300, guider focus 9000. Found telescope in afternoon at west limit 4h49W -15, Backed out with soft paddle. Also indicator said lower dome shutter was open. |
03/22/2022 | Keefe Kamp | Gokuldass, Fowler, Murphy, Magalon | CCD | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | Be star observations. The only problem to report was it seemed the RA lock took a while to lock when parking the telescope at the end of the night. |
03/22/2022 | Nayra Rodríguez | none | ARC CCD | 3 | 0 | No problems to report | Student research project on NEO follow-up, 2nd half night (started at 7:00 UT) |
03/16/2022 | James Webb | Observational astronomy class | CCD | 3 | 6 | Clouds | Class project. Took VRI images of the Tarantula nebula for color combining. |
03/15/2022 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 6 | 0 | No problems to report | Asteroid. No problems. |
03/14/2022 | Stephen Levine | None | Andor Camera | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Outer solar system small body occultation. |
03/08/2022 | Todd Hillwig | None. | Andor CCD | 4 | 0 | No problems to report | The night's observers had to call off at the last minute. Used the second half of the night while also observing at SARA-KP. |
03/07/2022 | Todd Hillwig | None. | Andor CCD | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | PN central stars. Some occasional pointing issues. As is typical, when this happens the telescope sets about 10 arcmin too far north. |
03/08/2022 | Ted von Hippel | none | unused | 0 | 0 | Other | Student observer became sick. I offered to give away SARA-CT night only a few hours before it started (unfortunately) and there were no takers. |
03/06/2022 | Ross Silver | Dieter, Yong | CCD | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Photometric redshift of blazars. |
03/05/2022 | Ted von Hippel | Alondra Valentin-Torres | imaging | 2 | 2 | Equipment Failure | Camera was inoperable and rebooting it didn't help. I put out a request for help to SARA-Tech and heard back from Kurtis Williams (thanks!) with a suggestion to reboot the computers. Either he or an anonymous elf logged in and fixed the camera problem (though not by rebooting the computers), though I don't know what the solution was. |
03/04/2022 | Zorayda Martinez | Kurtis Williams | Andor | 7 | 0 | No problems to report | White dwarf photometry, focus: 129999 |
03/03/2022 | Kurtis Williams | none | Andor | 9 | 0.5 | Other | White dwarf time series photometry. T=15C, focus=129500 at start of night with sudden change of -1500 in late morning. Seeing was mediocre at start of night (2" across mountain) but improved to 1" after local midnight. Used guider, with generally very good results. Target was at Dec=-10; at HA=-1:30 the telescope moved south by about 1 arcmin over 5 minutes - this motion was too fast for the guider to compensate, and the ACE RA/Dec readout did not register any change in position. At RA=+2h, the reverse happened - telescope moved north by about 1' over 5 minutes without the positional readout changing - lost about 15 minutes each time futzing about, resetting guiding, etc. |
02/28/2022 | Robert Berrington | none | Arc | 11 | 0 | No problems to report | short period variable stars. |
02/27/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | no problems to report |
02/26/2022 | Núria Torres-Albà | Yong Sheng, Scott Joffre | SARA CT | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Clemson University observations of high-z blazars |
02/25/2022 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | Galaxies in H-alpha, merging systems. Focus 127200, guide focus 8500. |
02/24/2022 | Priya Gokul dass | Fowler, Malign | CCD | 8.5 | 3 | No problems to report | TESS Follow Up of High Proper Motion Stars. I filter had weird brightness to it (like clouds but the sky was clear). |
02/21/2022 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 8.7 | 0 | No problems to report | Galaxies in H-alpha, merging galaxies, 30 Dor. Focus 127500, guider focus 8500. At dec +10, had recurrence of problem where telescope bobs N-S faster than guider could keep up. Shortly afterward, far to SE, focus shifted within a couple of minutes by 1500 units. |
02/15/2022 | Ted von Hippel | none | imaging | 0 | 0 | No problems to report | Tried to give away this half night but there were no takers. |
02/14/2022 | Kurtis Williams | none | Andor | 4.5 | 1 | Other | Time series photometry. Seeing was poor, 3+ arcsec despite clear skies, low wind, and good seeing reported from summit. Lost about 1 hour fiddling with focus and filters trying to see if the seeing was instrumental (it wasn't). Gave up as midnight CDT approached and I decided sleep would be more useful than the data I was collecting. |
02/13/2022 | Ross Silver | Dieter Hartmann | CCD | 8 | 0.5 | Equipment Failure | Photometric redshift of blazars.
Telescope stopped tracking for a little bit. Was able to reset and get it working again after losing about 30 minutes of observing time. |
02/12/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | got night from Jim Webb, no problems to report |
02/10/2022 | Todd Hillwig | None | Andor CCD | 5 | 0 | Other | Taught an evening lab, so lost the first half of the night. The guider stopped working properly about an hour in. The guide star was in the middle of the field, but showed very large x and y corrections, so would wander to the edge of the guide box and bounce around there. Not sure what was wrong. I didn't hit Calibrate, but that seems like it may be the most likely cause. |
02/05/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | only minor issue was the second filter wheel seemed to not move to the expected position twice -looked like fingers getting into the images. Hit the Init Filter Wheel button, seemed to fix the issue |
02/07/2022 | Ted von Hippel | Alondra Valentin-Torres | imaging | 3.5 | 0 | No problems to report | SMC observations for student project. |
02/06/2022 | Keefe Kamp | Gokuldass,Fowler, VanPutten | CCD | 10.5 | 0 | No problems to report | TESS Follow Up of High Proper Motion Stars. No problems to report. NOTE: Report by me with date 07 Feb has incorrect date should be for 08 Jan |
01/08/2022 | Keefe Kamp | None | CCD | 0 | 0 | No problems to report | Due to a mistake in scheduling, we missed the night no observing occurred. |
02/04/2022 | Martha Leake | none | Andor | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Asteroids. Remembered to check Autosave. Good night. Adjusted to objects slightly below and right of center. Seeing good but best focus produced stars 2.5 arcsec or larger. |
02/02/2022 | Todd Hillwig | None | Andor CCD | 9 | 0 | Other | There was a jump in best focus values during the night. I could not tell if the best focus actually changed significantly in a short time (unlikely since the temperature changed slowly and steadily), if the focus encoder value changed, or some other issue. |
02/01/2022 | Michael Fauerbach | NA | CCD | 6.5 | 2 | Clouds | asteroids |
01/31/2022 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 7.5 | 1 | Clouds | Galaxy mergers, 30 Dor. Tape installed by TELOPS did NOT eliminate stray-light problem. Focus 129400, guider focus 10500. Seeing improved dramatically during the night. Iimage quality (and shape) at best focus varied noticeably with position. |
01/27/2022 | Ken Rumstay | None | CCD camera | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | AGN monitoring program. The telescope slews to points slightly north (by varying amounts) of target. |
01/24/2022 | Ross Silver | Dieter Hartmann | CCD | 4 | 4 | Equipment Failure | Photometric redshift of blazars.
The telescope stopped tracking objects and would not move to the input coordinates. It moved to some unrecognizable field. After restarting the system, these issues were still present. |
01/21/2022 | Stephen Gillam | Alondra Valentin-Torres (ERAU) | Andor camera | 11 | 0 | No problems to report | ROAp stars. |
01/21/2022 | Ted von Hippel | Alondra Valentin-Torres | imaging | 2 | 0 | No problems to report | Training for student. Used two hours, then passed telescope to Steve Gillam (ERAU) for his work. |
01/17/2022 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 8.5 | 0 | No problems to report | JWST light curve (it's a technosignature). Focus 128500, guider focus 8400. |
01/15/2022 | James Webb | none | CCD | 0 | 10 | Connection Issues | I couldn't go in to observe and my laptop at home doesn't have VNC on it. I tried to give it away, but no takers.
|
01/16/2022 | Todd Hillwig | None. | Andor CCD | 7 | 1.5 | Humidity | PN central star monitoring. Humidity rose at end of night and had to close for the last hour and a half. |
01/10/2022 | Alex McDaniel | Dieter | Andor CCD | 5 | 4 | Clouds | Clemson blazer redshift study. Had some clouds for about half the night after midnight, otherwise ok. |
01/04/2022 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartmann | CT griz | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Clemson blazer redshift study.
The night went well, no problem to report. |
01/03/2022 | William Keel | 2 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Merging galaxies, Comet Leonard, 30 Dor, JWST. Focus 127200, gudie focus 0. After working fine for the last couple of weeks, solar-syste rates acted almost random near 0h, dec=0. Some exposures were at sidereal rates, others wandered in both coordinates. Focus changed a lot at end night; in some parts of the sky best images were still elongated E-W. |
12/29/2021 | Van Hamme, Walter | Samec | CCD | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | Observations of GSC 7093 0006 and 75170134. |
12/30/2021 | Van Hamme, Walter | Samec | CCD | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | Observations of GSC 7093 0006 and 75170134. |
12/28/2021 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Merging galaxies, 30 Dor, JWST, comet Leonard. The mirror acts a bit pinched - for the last couple of nights, when in sharpest focus, images are elongated E-W. Focus 127800, guide focus 0. |
12/27/2021 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Merging galaxies, 30 Dor, JWST |
12/26/2021 | William Keel | 1 cat | Andor CCD #2 | 0 | 8 | Clouds | Cloudy |
12/25/2021 | William Keel | 2 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 3 | 0 | No problems to report | Following JWST outbound. |
12/23/2021 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartmann | CT-griz | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | The night went smoothly, weather is good and no issue happens. |
12/22/2021 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 4 | 0 | No problems to report | Standard stars. |
12/20/2021 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 7 | 0 | No problems to report | Exoplanet. |
11/28/2021 | Van Hamme | Samec | CCD | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Observing and analysis of Light Curves of GSC75170234. |
12/14/2021 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 7 | 0 | No problems to report | Exoplanet. |
12/11/2021 | Ross Silver | Scott, Dieter | CCD | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Photometric redshift of blazars. |
12/10/2021 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD #2 | 8.5 | 0 | No problems to report | 30 Dor, merging galaxies. Focus 127000, guide focus 0. Seeing very poor at start of night, and focus shifted a lot later on. |
12/03/2021 | Nuria Torres-Albà | Scott, Dieter | SARA CT | 7 | 0 | No problems to report | Clemson University observations of high-z blazars
No problems to report |
12/02/2021 | William Keel | AY203 coass | Andor CCD #2 | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Galaxies and H II regions. Focus 127200, guider focus 0. |
11/29/2021 | Tom Rutherford | Gary Henson | CCD | 6 | 0 | No problems to report | Asteroid light curve. |
11/27/2021 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 7 | 0 | No problems to report | Exoplanet transit. |
11/26/2021 | Todd Hillwig | None. | Andor CCD | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | PN central star monitoring. |
11/23/2021 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 6 | 0 | No problems to report | Standard Stars. |
11/20/2021 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Exoplanet. No issues. |
11/22/2021 | Priya Gokuldass | Kamp | ccd | 2 | 8 | Clouds | TESS follow up observations. No new issues to report. |
11/21/2021 | Paulina Karczmarek | None | Andor CCD | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Observing program: absolute photometry in Sloan bands for local comparison stars of bright variables (Cepheids, RR Lyrae). |
11/18/2021 | Ross Silver | Dieter, Yong, Isaiah | CCD | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Obtaining photometric redshift of blazars. |
11/15/2021 | Paulina Karczmarek | None | Andor CCD | 8 | 0 | Equipment Failure | Observing program: absolute photometry in Sloan bands for local comparison stars of bright variables (Cepheids, RR Lyrae). Dropout shutter would not open entirely and indicated "opening" all the time. I don't know if this is a software problem or actual problem with the shutter engine. |
11/17/2021 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 7 | 0.5 | Software/Control PC Issues | Asteroid Photometry. Lower shutter gave no indication that it was open so I kept it closed (which meant that I could not reach one of my low targets). Could not access the telescope computer when I first logged in, but cycling the APC power rack brought it back up. All worked fine after that. |
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