SARA-CT Report Archive

Date	Name	Other Observers	Instrument	Hours Observed	Hours Lost	Reason	Observing Program
12/04/2021	Nuria Torres-Albà	Scott, Dieter	SARA CT	7	0	No problems to report	Clemson University observations of high-z blazars No problems to report
12/03/2021	William Keel	AY203 coass	Andor CCD #2	8	0	No problems to report	Galaxies and H II regions. Focus 127200, guider focus 0.
11/30/2021	Tom Rutherford	Gary Henson	CCD	6	0	No problems to report	Asteroid light curve.
11/28/2021	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	7	0	No problems to report	Exoplanet transit.
11/27/2021	Todd Hillwig	None.	Andor CCD	8	0	No problems to report	PN central star monitoring.
11/24/2021	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	6	0	No problems to report	Standard Stars.
11/23/2021	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	8	0	No problems to report	Exoplanet. No issues.
11/23/2021	Priya Gokuldass	Kamp	ccd	2	8	Clouds	TESS follow up observations. No new issues to report.
11/22/2021	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).
11/19/2021	Ross Silver	Dieter, Yong, Isaiah	CCD	8	0	No problems to report	Obtaining photometric redshift of blazars.
11/18/2021	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.
11/18/2021	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.
11/18/2021	Albert, Icarus	none	n/a	0	6	Connection Issues	Could not connect to telescope camera
11/18/2021	Albert, Icarus	Emmett Dalton	Bessel IRVB filters	6	0	No problems to report	data collection
11/14/2021	Gillam	Lilyanne Pepe, Aakash Thiyagarajan	Andor Camera	11	0	Equipment Failure	telescope control system indicated the dropout door hadn't opened all the way. We operated with that door closed. rOAp stars
11/12/2021	Keefe Kamp	Van Putten, Corcoan	CCD	7	1	Equipment Failure	Dec and RA limits triggered at login (Cardinal directions displayed in limit boxes). Had to have Peter fix it. Dropout would not detect open however would be open. Note on notepad discusses how to open. Other than that no other problem occurred. TESS Follow up observations done.
11/11/2021	Emmett Dalton		CCD	1	4	Equipment Failure	Dropout shutter still not opening but was able to take a few images up high above it.
11/10/2021	Yong Sheng	Dieter Hartmann	CT griz	9	0	Equipment Failure	There is a problem with the limit switch on the dropout. Brian said that he will send someone to check it out.
11/03/2021	Tomomi Otani	Johnathan Hodge	Andor CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Hot Subdwarf photometry observation for time series. Everything was working well tonight.
11/02/2021	William Keel	2 cats	Andor CCD #2	3	5	Clouds	NGC 1531, dodging clouds. Focus 128300, guider focus 8400. Very poor seeing early in night.
11/01/2021	Tomomi Otani	none	Andor CCD	7	0	Clouds	Hot subdwarf photometry time series. When I slew the telescope, the RA did not move. If I click the "slew" button again, it started moving with no problem.
10/30/2021	Tomomi Otani	Johnathan Hodge	Andor CCD	8	2	Equipment Failure	When we logged into the telescope control screen at the beginning of the night, we saw DEC limit (we saw all "N", "S", "W", "E") and could not slew the telescope. We also could not slew telescope using the pad. However, the airmass was 1.4. Peter helped me to fixed it. Peter said that it happened due to Loose wire on the telescope, or faulty tilt sensor, or something like that.
10/29/2021	Paulina Karczmarek	None	Andor CCD	7	1	Clouds	Thin clouds for majority of the night, so backup targets observed. Thick clouds in the last 2h of the night hindered observations of even backup targets.
10/28/2021	Tomomi Otani	Johnathan Hodge	Andor CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Hot subdwarf photometry observation. No problems to report.
10/27/2021	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	8	1	Software/Control PC Issues	Standard stars, variable star. No issues other than one I caused by closing the wrong window-- a full restart fixed it.
10/26/2021	XIANMING HAN	none	CCD	7.5	0	Other	eclipsing binary. The telescope was parked beyond the west limit from previous day, and I could not move it back. Peter from ACE helped moving the telescope back to operation range. The CCD camera was also way out of focus such that no stars were visible initially and got me confused for awhile, but I was able to realize the problem and fixed the focus.
10/26/2021	Tomomi Otani	None	Andor CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Hot Subdwarf photometry time series. No problem to report. Focus 129000 (no filter). CCD temperature: -55 C
10/24/2021	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	6	2	Software/Control PC Issues	Exoplanet. Image downloads were VERY slow (several minutes for each bias frame). Rebooted the CCD computer and it worked after that. The CCD sequence control on the telescope computer failed to work so rebooted the telescope computer as well-- took several tries to get it back up and running.
10/23/2021	Todd Hillwig	None	Andor CCD	8	0	No problems to report	Testing new Andor CCD. PN central stars.
10/22/2021	Keefe Kamp	Gokuldass, Norton	CCD	9	0	No problems to report	TESS Follow-up Observations. Was able to connect this time with Ubuntu. No new problems to report
10/21/2021	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	8	0	No problems to report	Exoplanet Transit, variable star
10/20/2021	Keefe Kamp	Gokuldass, Norton	CCD	9	1	Software/Control PC Issues	TESS follow-up observations. Could not connect to VPN from Ubuntu but from Mac worked. Ace froze when abort was pressed. Simple closing and reopening ACE fixed it. Weird banding artifact present in observations strongest in B caused low SNR.
10/19/2021	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	8	0	No problems to report	No problems-- all went well.
10/18/2021	Gergely Hajdu	Paulina Karczmarek	Andor camera	8	0	No problems to report	Observing program: absolute photometry in Sloan bands for local comparison stars of bright variables (Cepheids, RR Lyrae). Problems: sometimes offsets as large as RA -60, DEC -150 were necessary to move the fields to the desired position.
10/17/2021	Keefe Kamp	Gokuldass	CCD	9	0	No problems to report	TESS Follow up Observations of B stars and High Proper motion stars
10/15/2021	William Keel	AY203 class, 2 cats	Andor CCD #2	10	0	No problems to report	Class nebulae, cool galaxies. Seeing very good 2nd half of night. Focus 126300 (1000 higher for [O III\ 5007 filter). Guider focus 9900. Telescope did bob N-S around declinations -10 to -20.
10/14/2021	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	8	2	Clouds	Clouds started rolling in towards moring.
10/13/2021	William Keel	2 cats, Astro 203 lab class	New Andor CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Class demo nebulae, galaxies in BVR and H-alpha. Focus 125700, 5007 filter focus 1000 smaller. Guide focus 8400. Stray light is still there, with guider in extreme positions as well as center. Some targets took two presses of the GO button to complete a slew.
10/13/2021	Carlos Zuluaga	S. Levine	Andor Camera	3	0	No problems to report	Outer Solar System astrometry.
10/12/2021	Ted von Hippel	Giovanni Bacon, Jack Wood	imaging	4	0	No problems to report	Student observing for a class. They needed only the first 1/2 of the night and when I put out a call for users for the 2nd 1/2 of the night (admittedly with very little notice), there were no takers.
10/09/2021	Martha Leake	Logan Spooner	ARC camera	10.25	0	Other	Student projects, asteroid lightcurves and studies in parallax. Weather generally good. Images occasionally oscillated up and down close to transit. Confused by start time. Some oscillation of tracking errors during multiple exposures.
10/08/2021	Ken Rumstay	None	CCD camera	1	9	Humidity	AGN monitoring program. Everything worked fine for about an hour, long enough to get bias, flat, and dark images. When slewing to my first target, the telescope stopped, and the TOS indicated that it had reached the S and W limits. It was actually pointed northeast of the zenith. Peter was able to get the telescope moving again, but by then clouds had rolled in and the humidity climbed to over 80%. I gave up after midnight EDT. Previous observers reported similar limit issues in August. Observers should note that the problem may recur.
10/06/2021	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Asteroid phptometry
10/05/2021	Ken Watanabe	Nicolas RImbert	CCD	5	0	No problems to report	Stars tend to have triangle shape. Blazars.
10/03/2021	Stephen Levine	C. Zuluaga, A. Bosh	Andor Camera	4	0	No problems to report	Outer solar system astrometry. No issues. The Andor camera worked well.
10/02/2021	XIANMING HAN	Sera Shaughnessy	CCD	7	3	Equipment Failure	eclipsing binary and asteroid Camera computer was not reachable initially. ACE (and possibly others) helped recover the computer.
10/01/2021	XIANMING HAN	none	CCD	4	0	No problems to report	eclipsing binary, sharing the night
10/01/2021	XIANMING HAN	none	CCD	4.5	0	No problems to report	eclipsing binary, sharing the night
10/01/2021	XIANMING HAN	none	CCD	5	5	Clouds	eclipsing binary
09/30/2021	Walter Van Hamme	Samec	24" scope, CCD	0	11	Clouds	Observations and analysis of eclipsing binaries.
09/30/2021	Walter Van Hamme	samec	24", CCD	10	0	Clouds	Light curve observations and analysis of GSC75170134. I complete curve single coverage.
09/28/2021	Todd Hillwig	None	Andor CCD	6	0	No problems to report	PN central stars.
09/27/2021	Keefe Kamp	Gokuldass	CCD	6	4	Software/Control PC Issues	B star observations with CCD. Data stopped being saved properly because the disk became full.
09/26/2021	Paulina Karczmarek	none	Andor CCD	10	0.5	Software/Control PC Issues	"Classical Cepheids in the SDSS photometric system". The directory with data is virtually full, and that means that new exposures are not being saved, instead a 1KB file is created with no content. Deletion of a directory with our previously collected data solved the problem for now.
09/23/2021	Judi Provencal	none	Andor	5	0	No problems to report	Imaging for observational astronomy class
09/21/2021	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	6	0	No problems to report	Asteroid. No issues at all.
09/19/2021	Paulina Karczmarek	Gergely Hajdu	Andor CCD	10	0	Clouds	"Classical Cepheids in the SDSS photometric system", thin clouds the whole night.
09/19/2021	Paulina Karczmarek	none	Andor CCD	10.5	0	No problems to report	"Classical Cepheids in the SDSS photometric system"
09/19/2021	Paulina Karczmarek	none	Andor CCD	5.5	4.5	Clouds	"Classical Cepheids in the SDSS photometric system", clouds starting the middle of the night prevented further observations.
09/15/2021	Todd Hillwig	None	Andor CCD	6	0	No problems to report	PN central stars
09/15/2021	Todd Hillwig	None	Andor CCD	6	0	No problems to report	central stars of planetary nebulae.
09/13/2021	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	10.5	0	No problems to report	Asteroid photometry. Some thin clouds, else no issues.
09/12/2021	Martha Leake	Logan Spooner and Cera Purdy	ARC camera	1	8	Humidity	Asteroid photometry and other objects for Freshman Research Experience. Never opened. Clouds and high humidity issues early on; humidity predicted to persist until morning twilight. CTIO weather page and Clear Outside data mostly agreed: fog, possible snow and frost, humidity over 75% to 90%. Took just biases and darks.
09/11/2021	C. Zuluaga	S. Levine	Andor Camera	0	11	Clouds	Outer solar system astrometry.
09/03/2021	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	8.5	2	Equipment Failure	Asteroid photometry. The night was clear and the telescope was working great for most of the time. Howver, there were a few of my targets were the telescope would not track. Switched tracking off and on helped a bit for one frame, and then it would streak again. All targets were well above 40 degrees elevation. Moved to a different target and all worked perfectly again.
08/31/2021	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Galaxies. Telescope oscillated rapidly N-S when north of zenith, even in 1-second exposures. Following an object for long times improved but did not eliminate this. Focus 126800, guider focus 500.
08/30/2021	Saida Caballero	Kamp, Malagon	CCD	8	0	No problems to report	B star monitoring
08/29/2021	Tanner Norton	Caballero, Van Putten, Gokuldass, Malagon	CCD	6	0	No problems to report	Be Binary Survey
08/28/2021	Todd Hillwig	None	Andor CCD	5	5	Clouds	PN central stars. Thin clouds throughout the first half of the night, leading to overcast halfway through.
08/21/2021	Núria Torres-Albà	Dieter	SARA CT	10.5	0	No problems to report	Clemson University Observations of blazars. No problems to report.
08/20/2021	Robert Berrington	none	ARC Camera	0	10	Clouds	short period variable stars
08/19/2021	XIANMING HAN	none	CCD	0	10	Clouds	none
08/18/2021	Yong Sheng	Dieter Hartmann	griz	7.5	2.5	Software/Control PC Issues	The telescope was stuck at the RA and Dec limits
08/16/2021	XIANMING HAN	none	CCD	0	10	Clouds	The telescope was stuck at the east limit in addition to clouds. Emailed ACE to report this problem.
08/16/2021	XIANMING HAN	none	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	eclipsing binaries, jupiter
08/11/2021	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Asteroid photometry
08/10/2021	Steve Gillam	Kiara Richardson & Chloe Nelson	Andor CCD	13	0	No problems to report	ROAp stars.
08/08/2021	Stephen Gillam	None	Andor CCD	3	7	Humidity	Clouds, humidity, and low temperatures forced closedown.
08/05/2021	Stephen Levine	C. Zuluaga, A.Bosh	Andor Camera	4	0	No problems to report	Preparatory observations for occultation tomorrow.
08/04/2021	Ken Rumstay	Max tha cat	CCD camera	9	0	No problems to report	Observed active galaxies. The telescope systematically pointed about three to four arcminutes north of target. About 30-60 minutes east of the meridian (depending upon the declination) the telescope appeared to oscillate in declination, resulting in images severely elongated in the north-south direction. The connection to the CTIO computers was terminated on three occasions during the night as noted by earlier observers), but reconnecting posed no problem.
08/02/2021	Martha Leake	none	Andor	12	0.5	Connection Issues	Asteroid photometry. Some connection issues getting started; used the full reconnection routine (and ace-gui message appeared). Don't forget Autosave. Can't see sky at CTIO because they are possibly disconnected? Two slews needed another "Go" or time to finish. One radmin drop of Sara Telescope. Last observations at altitude 53 to east resulted in trails first tilted right then left, then straighter (N was down, EW horizontal) Pointing good. Maxim timed out and was not used. Seeing about 1"and weather great.
07/31/2021	Keefe Kamp	1 Chinchilla	CCD	11	0	Connection Issues	Be star observations. Had a problem where VPN kicked me out and wouldn't let me back on. A restart of my machine fixed that. Camera computer also alerted that C: Drive was low on memory.
07/30/2021	Alex McDaniel	Dieter	Andor CCD	12	0	No problems to report	Blazar Photo z measurements. No issues tonight
07/28/2021	Alex McDaniel	Dieter Hartmann	Andor CCD	12	0	No problems to report	Blazar Photo z measurements. No issues tonight
07/19/2021	Van Hamme	Samec	24"	12	0	No problems to report	Observations of interacting binaries, V2716 Oph and GSC 7517 0234. Continued Observations. A few clouds at the start only.
07/19/2021	Van Hamme	Samec	24"	null	null	No problems to report	Observations of interacting binaries, V2716 Oph and GSC 7517 0234. Began Observations.
07/17/2021	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	11	0	No problems to report	Telescope computer was unresponsive a couple of times -looked like a lost connection. Only the telescope computer had these issues. Blanco and SOAR webcams stopped updating images around 11:30pm local time.
07/15/2021	Harum Ahmed	Kent Montgomery	Andor	8.5	0	No problems to report	Asteroid Photometry Ended observation due to reaching 30 degrees altitude. Weather: Clear skies.
07/14/2021	Harum Ahmed	Kent Montgomery	Andor	9	0	No problems to report	Asteroid Photometry Weather: Clear skies.
07/13/2021	James Webb	None	CCD	0	10	Connection Issues	My internet flaked out early and never had a chance to observe.
07/13/2021	Harum Ahmed	Kent Montgomery	Andor	9	0	Other	Asteroid Photometry Problems: The telescope moved North for 3 min at Alt. of 32 degrees, H.A. was -4:46:41 and Azimuth was 126. Had streaks in the image. Weather: Clear skies.
07/12/2021	Harum Ahmed	Kent Montgomery	Andor	7	1	Other	Asteroid Photometry Problems: Closed observation due to reaching the limit of 30 degrees altitude. Weather: Clear with thin clouds.
07/10/2021	Stephen Gillam	None	Andor camera	9	1	Other	rOap stars. Stormy weather in Daytona Fl. caused internet outage which prevented connection to SARA-CT at the start of the night.
07/08/2021	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	11	0	No problems to report	Dead quasar survey, H II regions. Focus 128200 start, 126700 end, guider focus 0. Some equatorial targets took multiple slew commands to get to the right place.
07/07/2021	XIANMING HAN	none	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	binaries, Jupiter satellites
07/07/2021	Ross Silver	Dieter, Yong	CCD	0	10	Equipment Failure	Photometric redshift of blazars. The DEC tracking would not work. We reset the whole system and the tracking but could not get it to work.
07/03/2021	Mabel Clausen	Kurtis Williams	Andor	0	9	Clouds	Thick clouds at the start of the night unlikely to clear.
07/03/2021	Mabel Clausen	Harum Ahmed	Andor	5	4	Clouds	White Dwarf Time Series Photometry Problem: Telescope moved South for Image 98. For more details see last nights report was the same. Weather: Thickening clouds had to close early
07/02/2021	Mabel Clausen	Harum Ahmed & Kurtis Williams	Andor	9	0.5	Equipment Failure	White Dwarf Time Series Photometry Problem: Near start of night and at end of target run telescope moved north/south over several exposures HA: -2:51, Az: 84, ALT: 50 Telescope moved south 87 arc sec over 9 min HA: +3:39, Az: 269, ALT: 39 Telescope moved north 79 arc sec over 15 min We were not using auto guider Telescope pointing was steady otherwise Note: ACE disabled telescope limits: at their request we kept telescope at altitude greater than 30 degrees all night Weather: High thin Cirrus all night Seen: 2-3 arc sec Focus: 12770
07/01/2021	Gergely Hajdu	Paulina Karczmarek	Andor camera	10	2	Equipment Failure	Observing program: backup program (griz time series of V445 Oph and V Ind), due to thin clouds making the original program unfeasible (absolute photometry of Cepheid comparison stars in the Sloan bands). There were technical problems on two occasions, first when observing V445 Oph around azimuth ~ 0, the camera FoV would produce very strange vertical (DEC direction) PSFs while exposing. Sometimes the length of these reached over 300 pixels! This lasted for about an hour, ending around UT03. Secondly, while observing V Ind, around UT06:50 the telescope got completely stuck. I couldn't move it with giving it movement orders, offsets, or the paddle. The only thing I could do is to close the mirror cover and the dome, to leave the telescope in a safe state. As this happened near the end of the night, we didn't lose too much time, but I couldn't attempt doing sky flats.
06/27/2021	Stephen Gillam	None	Andor Camera	13	0	No problems to report	R0Ap stars.
06/25/2021	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	12	0	No problems to report	no issues, other than the Full Moon
06/23/2021	Gary Henson	Rutherford	Andor CCD	7	2.5	Clouds	Asteroid 18488 Light Curve Dec Oscillation at around -1 HA while tracking object. Problem appeared as reported by other observers, went to Zenith park and then back on target with no further occurrences. Band of cirrus clouds after midnight. Seeing and tracking with autoguider excellent most of night.
06/20/2021	Tomomi Otani	Andy Baran	Andor CCD	12	0.3	Software/Control PC Issues	Photometry time series of a hot subdwarf star. Thank you very much, Brian, for adding the decimal points to the observation time of the image header. Everything was good but the telescope started moving to the DEC direction at the Hour Angle ~ +3 hours. This was the same issue that we experienced the last night, so it may repeat again in future.
06/19/2021	Otani	Andy Baran	Andor CCD	12	0.5	Software/Control PC Issues	Photometry time series to check pulsations. The telescope suddenly started moving to the DEC direction (the target's y position moved 2 pixels/image). So I moved the telescope to the zenith and moved it back to the target, then the issue was solved. The camera connection suddenly disappeared while taking images, so I used the regular procedure to reconnect the camera. The header's observation time did not have decimal digit (so we could not obtain less than 1 second accuracy).
06/18/2021	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	9	3	Clouds	Clouds off and on throughout the night. Heavy cloud cover in the morning.
06/16/2021	Kurtis Williams	Mabel Clausen & Harum Ahmed (REU students)	N/A	0	12	Clouds	A text note was open on the desktop saying that due to testing the telescope limits had been disabled and the telescope should not be used. Was that a one-day affair, or is this ongoing for multiple nights? If the latter, perhaps a note should go out to sara-tech... (This didn't affect us since clouds were thick and the weather forecast poor)
06/14/2021	Stephen Levine	C. Zuluaga, A. Bosh	Andor Camera	1	9	Equipment Failure	Outer solar system astrometry and Pluto occultation. When trying to pre-set to the night's occultation field, which was going to be very low and rising, the telescope became stuck in the limits and would not back out. No motions responded from the hand paddle. In the end, we closed things up as it was.
06/13/2021	Yong Sheng	None	CT griz	13	0	No problems to report	Clemson Blazar study.
06/11/2021	Ken Rumstay	None	CCD camera	12.5	0	No problems to report	AGN monitoring program. An excellent night, with a dark sky and sub-arcsecond seeing.
06/10/2021	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	7.5	0	No problems to report	Nebulae, galaxies behind dust. Focus=126500, guider focus 9000.
06/09/2021	Stephen Levine	C. Zuluaga, A. Bosh	Andor Camera	2	0	No problems to report	Outer solar system astrometry.
06/07/2021	Steve Gillam	None	Andor Camera	12	0	No problems to report	ROAp stars
06/02/2021	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	7	4	Equipment Failure	As mantioned in my email to sara-tech, the whole telescope computerACE crashed after a CCD abort. After recovering, the Default DEC Encoder fault kept flashing. Tried to reboot computer etc but nothing got rid of it. I was able to park, close the covers and close the dome shutters -at least it said it did. I have not seen this error before, and I was not able to recover from it.
06/01/2021	XIANMING HAN	none	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	eclipsing binaries
06/01/2021	XIANMING HAN	none	CCD	0	10	Clouds	none
06/01/2021	XIANMING HAN	none	CCD	0.25	10	Clouds	eclipsing binary
05/31/2021	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	7	0	No problems to report	Landolt Fields. Open Clusters. No problems at all.
05/28/2021	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	0	9	Clouds	Clouds all night-- unable to open.
05/27/2021	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	7	0	No problems to report	Landolt fields. No problems-- everything worked perfectly.
05/16/2021	Fauerbach	NA	CCD	8	3	Clouds	asteroid photometry. Clouds the first three hours, else fine
05/15/2021	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	8	2	Clouds	Clouds early in the morning Filterwheel 2 is not responding to commands
05/14/2021	Stephen Levine	C. Zuluaga, A. Bosh	Andor Camera	11	0	No problems to report	Outer solar system astrometry. One instance where the tracking stopped. Not clear why. Able to re-enable and keep going.
05/13/2021	Leila Alamos	Stephen Gillam	Andor Camera	12	8	Clouds	Observing Program: ROAp stars Problems: It was very cloudy during the entire observation Suggestion: Filter wheel 2 might indicate a problem due to its constant blinking. *relates to the May 11th and May 12th night of observation
05/13/2021	Leila Alamos	Stephen Gillam	Andor Camera	12	6	Humidity	Observing Program: ROAp stars Problems: Humidity was very high towards the end of the night and so we had to pack up early. Suggestion: Filter wheel 2 might indicate a problem due to its constant blinking.
05/10/2021	Stephen Levine	C. Zuluaga, A. Bosh	Andor Camera	0	11	Clouds	Outer solar system astrometry.
05/09/2021	Steve Gillam	None	None	0	13	Connection Issues	ROAp stars A recent update to windows 10 killed the Cisco VPN client on my computer. I was unable to reinstall it. This is the 7th time in the last 3 years that I have had to reinstall the Global VPN client, the Cisco VPN client, the DNE program, and run Winfix.exe after a Windows update. Running winfix.exe corrupted the Windows Installer neccessitating a complete reinstallation of my Operating system. I strongly recommend replacing the Cisco VPN service, which is no longer supported by Cisco, with one that is supported and compatible with Windows 10.
05/07/2021	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	0	10	Clouds	Never opened cloudy all night
05/07/2021	Todd Christopher Hillwig	None	Andor CCD	10	0	No problems to report	None.
05/01/2021	Todd Christopher Hillwig	None	Andor CCD	10	0	No problems to report	PN central star monitoring
04/29/2021	Tom Rutherford	Henson	CCD	5	0	No problems to report	Southern T Tauri stars. No problems-- everything worked well.
04/27/2021	Gary Henson	Rutherford	Andor CCD	4	1	Equipment Failure	Lost first hour when Altitude Limit tripped. Telescope not near horizon, but Slew not recovered until ACE turned off switch to move telescope. Pointing, tracking, filter wheel sequence all worked fine so observations excellent once started.
04/26/2021	Walter Van Hamme	samec	camera	null	0	No problems to report	Observations of active solar type binaries.
04/24/2021	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	11	0	No problems to report	H II regions near and far. Explored stray light mitigation by doing images with shutter open and telescope covers closed. Early on, a span of panic when it appeared that stars left charge trails along -y but this seems to have been asymmetric telescope bounce. Focus 126800, guide focus 2000. Pleased to see that the Andor CCD can recover control after an abort just by reopening the "observations" panel in ACE software. Guider was not able to correct for NS telescope motions near -65, 1hr west.
04/22/2021	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	5	5	Clouds	Galaxies in H-alpha, checking out stray light. Focus=127800, guider focus 2000. Guider parameters had been corrupted; reset to X speed = Y speed=1, angle=0. The stray light between filters is puzzling - it looks brighter (in ADU/minute) in H-alpha than in R, and only slightly dimmer in B than in R. Its contrast across the field does seem to change with filter.
04/21/2021	Alex McDaniel	Yong Sheng, Dieter Hartmann	CT	6	5	Humidity	Blazar Photo z measurements
04/18/2021	Saida Caballero	Kamp, Le, Fowler, Richards, Miorelli	CCD	12	0	No problems to report	Photometric survey Be stars.
04/17/2021	Todd Hillwig	None.	Andor CCD	9	1	Clouds	PN central star photometry
04/16/2021	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	11	0	No problems to report	Dead quasar survey, H II regions, stray-light checkout. Focus=128300, seeming finicky tonight.
04/15/2021	Stephen Levine	C. Zuluaga	Andor Camera	11	0	No problems to report	Outer solar system astrometry. No issues to report.
04/14/2021	Stephen Levine	C. Zuluaga	Andor Camera	12	0	No problems to report	Outer solar system astrometry, and basic testing of new Andor camera to understand the performance in the various modes. Looks good.
04/12/2021	Ken Rumstay	None	CCD camera	9	0	No problems to report	AGN monitoring program No problems to report Optimum focus = 127800 at T = 16 Celsius Telescope pointing after slew not perfect, but target was always within CCD filed.
04/11/2021	Ross Silver	Dieter, Yong	CCD	11	0	No problems to report	Photometric redshifts of BL Lacs.
04/06/2021	XIANMING HAN	Andrew Gebken	CCD	8.5	0	No problems to report	eclipsing binary
04/06/2021	XIANMING HAN	Andrew Gebken	CCD	8	0.5	Clouds	eclipsing binary
04/06/2021	XIANMING HAN	Andrew Gebken	CCD	8.5	0	No problems to report	eclipsing binary
04/06/2021	XIANMING HAN	Andrew Gebken	CCD	8.5	0	No problems to report	Eclipsing binary
04/06/2021	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	11	0	No problems to report	Dead quasar survey, Andor CCD checkout. Focus 128000, guider focus 2000. Found potential gotcha when recovering from sequence abort - CCD came back in 3 MHz readout instead of previously set 1 MHz; bought myself some noise for the next hour or so. There is a diffuse pattern in darks at about 1 ADU/minute which looks like a light leak but persists at night so it seems to be an actual property of the chip.
04/01/2021	Todd Hillwig	None	Andor CCD	10	0.5	Equipment Failure	Telescope routinely pointed about 10 arcminutes to the north. This was corrected every time by simply hitting "Send" a second time, at which point the telescope pointed correctly with the target in the inner third of the chip.
03/29/2021	Gary Henson	Rutherford	Andor CCD	0	6	Other	NOTE: this happened night of 4/28 so 4/28 report is really for 4/26, don't see way to edit old reports so submitting with wrong date for some completeness of logs. Power Failure at Dome just after flats, Power out 4+ hours but all systems came back up once power restored. Uncertain of failure cause and night half gone so closed up and quit early.
03/28/2021	Tom Rutherford	Henson	CCD	6	0	Other	Asteroid light curve. Due to the filter wheel issue, I set wheel #2 to clear (where it was supposed to have been already, but wasn't) and moved wheel #1 to "R." Both wheels seemed to behave normally. Did no filter changes from this point onward-- everything else behaved properly and I had no problems with the scope except for a sudden jump toward the south by an arc minute or so (something that has happened to me before with CT) halfway through the run.
03/24/2021	James Webb	keslo Estil	CCD	4	0	Other	Imaging nebula and galaxies Tracking was horrible at 2 hours before transit. Not even the auto guider could correct guiding errors. Every where else, tracking was great.
03/22/2021	Yong Sheng	Alex McDaniel, Dieter Hartmann	g, r, i, z filters of CT	1	10	Equipment Failure	We can't observe because of the filter issue on the wheel 2. It won't change to the correct filter, and it got stuck.
03/18/2021	Stephen Levine	Carlos Zuluaga	Imaging camera	11	0	No problems to report	Outer solar system astrometry. At sunset, clear, T=12.6C, RH=56%, Windspeed=4.4mph A smooth night.
03/17/2021	Keefe Kamp	Caballero, Zamora	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Observed Comets for ObsAstro Class and Standard Feilds with help from guide camera for ETC. Everything behaved normally
03/13/2021	Todd Christopher Hillwig	None	FLI CCD	10	0	No problems to report	PN central star monitoring. Only used Filter Wheel #1 and had no issues with it.
03/12/2021	William Keel	3 cats	FLI CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Dead quasar survey, galaxy dust lanes. Focus 132200. guider focus 2000.
03/11/2021	Martha Leake	students	FLI Cam	2	7	Clouds	Added comment: I attempted to change filters from SDSS_R to empty, in order to use the Bessel filters in Wheel 1. The filter change didn't progress, and looked like a blockage of the frame. Ran the initialization of Wheel 2 with unknown success. Filter remains sdss_r.
03/11/2021	Martha Leake	Students in Tools class	FLI Cam	2	7	Clouds	80 percent high clouds, star fields visible through it, however. Predicted high humidity reached near morning twilight. Student participation delayed because of local connection issues.
03/08/2021	Ross Silver	Yong, Alex, Dieter	CCD	0	10	Equipment Failure	Photometric redshift of blazars. Filter wheel 2 is still not reliable and working consistently, therefore we could not observe.
03/06/2021	Amy Lovell		CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Objects for lab - images and lightcurves
03/05/2021	Saida Caballero	Malagon	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Standard star fields. No issues to report.
03/04/2021	Amy Lovell	AST200L: Kimbarl King Krahm Nguyen	CCD	8	0	No problems to report	Imaging a variety of objects with AST200 lab students
03/03/2021	Keefe Kamp	Caballero	CCD	4	0	No problems to report	Observed Various Targets with Observational Astronomy Class. Telescope tracking seemed slightly off as stars were elongating even with short (~10 sec) exposures.
02/26/2021	Saida Caballero	N/A	CCD	0	10	Clouds	Too cloudy to open. From previous night (24 Feb) forgot to mention that the guide camera was not working. Did not test it tonight.
02/25/2021	Saida Caballero	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.
02/24/2021	Saida Caballero	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."
02/21/2021	Amy J Lovell		CCD	6	5.5	Equipment Failure	Started okay, but then camera disconnected, required ACE intervention. Once restored, no problems to report.
02/20/2021	Núria Torres-Albà	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
02/18/2021	Amy Lovell	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.
02/16/2021	Martha Leake	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	Dieter Hartmann	CCD	0	9	Equipment Failure	Photometric redshifts of BL Lacs.
02/13/2021	Martha Leake	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.
02/11/2021	William Keel	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).
02/10/2021	James Raymond Webb	Viviana Arroyave, Keslo Estil	CCD	6	0	No problems to report	Blazar monitoring and imaging galaxies
02/08/2021	Yong Sheng	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
02/07/2021	Ken Rumstay	None	CCD camera	0	10	Equipment Failure	The #1 filter wheel is not operating, as noted by Amy Lovell last night.
02/06/2021	Amy Lovell	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.
02/05/2021	William Keel	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	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.
02/03/2021	Saida Caballero	Kamp, Class	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Class observing and standard star field. X-stage guider did not seem to like moving to the W fields. Had to reinitialize. Guiding worked very well. We did reach the horizon limit when trying to slew away from it, but were able to move the telescope with the paddle and slew normally.
02/02/2021	Keefe Kamo	Saida Caballero, Natalia Malagon	CCD	11	0	No problems to report	Observed Standard Fields for CCD calibration utilizing Guider
02/01/2021	William Keel	3 cats	FLI CCD	8	0	No problems to report	Galaxies, supernovae, Surveyor 2 Centaur stage. Focus 131500, guider focus 0. Guider stage will only reach positions 0 and E1. There was an error message FAULTY ABSOLUTE DEC ENCODER on ACE screen; unsure when it appeared.
01/31/2021	Keefe Kamp	Caballero, Le, Klare	CCD	11	0	No problems to report	Standard Star Feilds taken for calibration. The only problem that occurred was accidentally pressing abort twice and needing to follow the notepad instructions to reconnect the camera.
01/31/2021	Amy Lovell	King	CCD	3	3	Connection Issues	student training, images for lab analysis, connection problems at this end, tried to find the right pointing offset a few times
01/31/2021	Amy Lovell	Krahm	CCD	2	7	Clouds	Student training, thin clouds rolled over after not too long
01/27/2021	Van Hamme	Samec	FLI camera	9	3	Equipment Failure	Observations of Eclipsing Variables, EI Oct and WISEJ051352.5-170113. Network problems. connection very weak. Closed down multiple times. Very slow reacting.
01/27/2021	Walter Van Hamme	Samec	FLI camera	12	0	No problems to report	Observations of Eclipsing Variables, EI Oct and WISEJ051352.5-170113.
01/27/2021	Van Hmme	Samec	FLI Camera	12	0	No problems to report	Observations of Eclipsing Variables, EI Oct and WISEJ051352.5-170113.
01/25/2021	Tomomi Otani	Andy Baran	CCD	9	0	No problems to report	Hot Subdwarf stars photometry time series. Focus 134700 at the beginning of the night, and I needed to increase it later. The weather was good but some clouds came during the second half of the night. Telescope was working well.
01/23/2021	Tom Rutherford	Gary Henson	CCD	5	3	Clouds	Cloudy first part of the night, but cleared around local midnight. The telescope and CCD worked perfectly.
01/22/2021	Walter Van Hamme	Samec	FLI Camera	8	0	No problems to report	Observations of Eclipsing variables WISE051352,5-170113 and EI Oct.
01/22/2021	Walter Van Hamme	Samec	FLI Camera	8	0	No problems to report	Observations of Eclipsing variables WISE051352,5-170113 and EI Oct.
01/20/2021	Tomomi Otani	No one	CCD	7	0	No problems to report	Subdwarf B star photometry time series for searching for companions. Everything was working well and the weather was good too.
01/19/2021	James Webb	Keslo Estil	CCD	6	0	No problems to report	Galaxy imaging
01/18/2021	Núria Torres-Albà	Dieter Hartmann	-	8	0	No problems to report	Clemson University Blazar Observations. No problems to report.
01/15/2021	Ken Watanabe	Nick Rimbert	None	0	9	Connection Issues	Not able to keep connection using cisco vpn on win 10. Not other way to connect?.
01/09/2021	Ken Rumstay	None	CCD camera	9	0	No problems to report	AGN monitoring program No problems to report. Telescope tends to point north of target, as noted by Bill Keel. Optimum focus 131000 at 12 Celsius. CCD temperature was -28 Celsius at start; it cooled to -30 within an hour and remained there.
01/08/2021	William Keel	3 cats	FLI CCD	8.5	0	No problems to report	Test drive, galaxies in H-alpha. Focus=133000. Even after initialization, the guider x-stage has limited movement; to the west it can’t quite reach W1. The NSEW directions are 180 degrees rotated from their previous directions; +x is to the east and +y to the north. The guider settings for x and y speed and angle are 1,1,0 (sign changes on the speeds from previous values). The guider focus is close to 0. Guiding works well; in some parts of the sky there were oscillations of 1-2” lasting several minutes, as if the slow-motion controls didn’t have enough authority in those locations. There was one complete guide failure where the stars wandered around by 30 arcseconds. Evening twilight flats showed a very large elliptical “Eye of Sauron” pattern which is new; bright in some filters and dark in others. There are also three new narrow features looking almost like scratches. I’ll check in the morning to see how reproducible these flat-field features are and compare sensitivities using Landolt standards with the latest pre-shutdown values. The cooler is struggling even with set point -30 C - the reported value ranged from -22 to -28.
05/27/2020	Xianming Han	none	CCD	7	1.5	Software/Control PC Issues	Observed eclipsing binary. 1. The ACE control cabinet needed rebooting at the beginning of the night. 2. The FWHM was spreading too widely for the same focus position, so that the auto focusing was confused about what is the best focus position. Solution: narrow down the search range. 3. Telescope lost tracking about 2 hours before the end of the night. Once that was fixed, the dome lost tracking It turns out the dome does not move at all, not even manually. So closed the telescope.