SARA 

Stephen Gillam

ERAU

None

ARC Camera

9

0

No problems to report

rOAp stars. The weather was excellent, the sky very stable, and the equipment worked almost flawlessly. The RA tracking wobbles a little at hour angles greater than +3 hours and 45 mins. The CCD camera was operating at the unusually low temperature of -120C to -130C.

Kyle Pellegrin

Clemson University

None

ARC CCD

7

0

No problems to report

Observed starburst galaxies.

Kyle Pellegrin

Clemson University

None

ARC CCD & Spectrograph

0

7

Clouds

Took a set of spectrograph bias images. Couldn't observe due to clouds.

Kurtis Williams

TAMU-C

none

Andor

0

12

Equipment Failure

Observatory closed for focus mechanism repair

Kurtis Williams

TAMU-C

none

Andor

0

12

Equipment Failure

Entire top of telescope, including secondary mirror, missing, so little light was reaching the CCD. Focusing mechanism was also inoperative.

Martha Leake

Valdosta State University

Kyle Kent, Sam Panzika, Val Carey

ARC camera

10.3

1

Other

Student projects in Obs. Techn., asteroid light curve continued. Filter wheel 1 stuck twice in I filter; able to return to normal by small changes, initializing. The usual -1000C readings for CCD Temp; returned to normal when Obser. window refreshed. Ghost streak on dark after bright star on previous frame. Have appts to keep this morning, so stopping early.

Priya Gokuldass

Florida Tech

Kamp

CCD/Spectrograph

1.5

8

Clouds

Cyg X1 and Be spectroscopic observations planned but canceled due to high altitude clouds.

Martha Leake

Valdosta State University

Observational Techniques class

ARC camera

12

0.3

Software/Control PC Issues

Filter Wheel 2 seemed stuck in the filter changes; tried restarting Ace, later Peter helped with the problem. I kept expecting the filter message to read "At filter X" but it read "Moving to filter X". Main clue is that all filters visible and the one needed has a dot. Otherwise, no problems. One "jerk" in morning, but it steadied shortly after. Looked at many objects including Comet 67P. Too many students to give all a chance.

Ken Rumstay

VSU (Emeritus)

None

CCD camera

9

0

No problems to report

AGN monitoring program. A fairly productive night, despite the variable cloud cover. Note: 300-second dark frames show two vertical streaks; I'll post an example.

Kyle Pellegrin

Clemson University

Samalka Anandagoda

ARC CCD & Spectrograph

9

0

No problems to report

Continued monitoring of M31N 2008-12a field. Additional images of nebulas and NGC 6946. First night getting spectra.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

9

0

No problems to report

Spectroscopy of Massive Magnetic Stars Find track rate of 15.064, +0.011 works very well for long exposures.

Kyle Pellegrin

Clemson University

none

ARC CCD & Spectrograph

5.5

0

No problems to report

Observed NGC 6946, M31N 2008-12a field, and dumbbell nebula.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

10

0

No problems to report

Spectroscopy of Massive Magnetic Stars, Training for Clemson Observer Note Good Track Rate of 15.064, +0.011

Kyle Pellegrin

Clemson University

Dr. Dieter Hartmann

ARC CCD

7

0

No problems to report

Observed planetary nebulae and NGC 6946

William Keel

University of Alabama

Astro 203 class

ARC CCD

3.5

0

No problems to report

Planetary nebulae for class. Focus 502500 was pretty good; approaching focus from much lower values seemed pretty well behaved.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

spectrograph

6

0

No problems to report

Spectroscopy of Massive Magnetic Stars

Emmett Dalton

ASC

CCD

1

3

Other

Asteroid rotation period. Low altitude warning. Moved back with paddle. Humid at beginning of night.

Keefe Kamp

FIT

Gokuldass

CCD/Spec

0

10

Wind

Be Photometric and Spectroscopic Observations planned but could not open due to sporadic high winds

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

5

5

Clouds

Spectroscopy of Massive Magnetic Stars Lost first half of night to clouds, no issues after that.

William Keel

University of Alabama

AY203 class, 2 cats

ARC CCD

6

3

Equipment Failure

Dust in galaxies, nebulae. Happened upon magic focus at 138100 for 1st four hours (thanks to Brian Brondel for going to the dome and restoring operation after storm and power outage), after which a 20-degree move made the focus slip and not only lost 1-hr exposure but 1.25 hours getting it back. Then it continued to slip during exposures, so I knew when I was beaten. But that first exposure stack is great.

Emmett Dalton

Agnes Scott College

CCD

0

5

Connection Issues

I was unable to connect to computers.

Martha Leake

Valdosta State University

Logan Spooner

ARC camera

10.0

0.25

Student projects and asteroid light curves and parallax test this Oct. 8. Slightly late start on this telescope, as I was observing at CTIO too. KP weather started cloudy and humid but improved then worsened at morning twilight; so I missed flats (will use those from 10/5). Slow slews were restarted. Successful night, despite confusion

William Keel

University of Alabama

Marcos Santander, Password-change Kitty

ARC CCD

8

3

Dead quasar survey, observer training. 138100 was an unusually good focus; guider focus ranged from -300 to +100.

Martha Leake

Valdosta State University

Eight students in Obs. Techniques

ARC camera

9

1

Student projects and asteroid photometry after they finished. Noted interesting small streak in lower left corner of a 180s dark, but no streak in the biases after that. Humidity was high earlier than I expected, but then fell from 12 midnight on. Spent one hour waiting for humidity to improve. Focus was great until I reached about HA of 2.5h.

Kyle Pellegrin

Clemson University

Samalka, Dr. Hartmann, Madeline, Kouser

ARC CCD

1

5

Had to stop observing due to clouds.

XIANMING HAN

Butler Univ

Sera Shaughnessy

CCD

9

0

eclipsing binary, asteroid

Martha Leake

Valdosta State University

Alicia Heger

ARC camera

0

12

Student projects and asteroid light curves. I was unable to connect to KPNO. Gary said that he could get it and that the problem may be local. Using RADMIN, I was not able to connect with any of the three KPNO computers, although I could connect to CTIO and ORM. I will be checking with our IT folks soon. Skies were partly cloudy. Xianming was able to use the night.

XIANMING HAN

Butler Univ

Josh Wanninger

CCD

10

0

eclipsing binary and asteroid. ACE helped fixing the camera (which was reported not functioning in the previous day).

XIANMING HAN

Butler University

Josh Wanninger

CCD

0

10

Lost first half of the night due to clouds. Lost 2nd half due to camera issues: The CCD camera on SARA KP is not functioning. It does take images. But all images look like bias. I tried different exposure times, different filters, checked X-stage guider positions and made sure the spectrograph is not checked, turning on and off the dome red lights, telescope mirror cover open and close. But none of these seem to make any difference. Have emailed ACE. And tried to call ACE but did not succeed yet.

William Keel

University of Alabama

2 cats

ARC CCD

0

12

Dead quasar survey, wiped out by clouds thicker and lasting longer than in the forecast.

Keefe Kamp

Florida Tech

Norton, Gokuldass, Tobolski, Baranowski

CCD and Spec

0

10

Be Star and TESS follow-up observations planned. Right at twilight threatening clouds came in and did not look like they were going anywhere.

Kyle Pellegrin

Clemson University

Samalka Anandagoda, Dr. Hartmann

ARC CCD

0

5

Couldn't observe due to clouds and chance of rain during the night.

Kyle Pellegrin

Clemson University

Samalka Anandagoda, Dr. Dieter Hartmann

ARC CCD

4

0

Observed starburst galaxies.

XIANMING HAN

Butler Univ

Sera Shaughnessey

CCD

5.5

4.5

CCD camera froze. Tried to access Switch 1 to recycle power to ACE control Cabinet. But switch 1 is not accessible (only switch 2 is accessible). Will email ACE about this problem. After restarting ACE software, a camera does begin to take images, but this camera appears to be a different camera (same stars do not show up). So please take a look.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

9.5

0

Spectroscopy of Massive Stars, Spectrograph appears to be working nominally after summer shutdown. FLI ccd cooled to -37C running TEC at about 97% power. With external air temp ~17C, focus settings were Fiber plate (-515), Spectrum (-3650), Telescope (151000). Found track rates of 15.065, +0.011 to be reasonably good before autoguiding, but autoguiding was excellent and system stable although I observed and tracked a single target all night.

Keefe Kamp

FIT

Caballero, Gokuldass

CCD, Spec

0

12

Planed Be photometric and Spectroscopic observations however with a 50% chance of rain tonight. decided not to open.

Tomomi Otani

ERAU

Brian Herbster

CCD

0

10

Since dome control UPS appears to have failed, Gary suggested us not to open the dome if precipitation threat within 24 hours. Precipitation threat tonight and tomorrow, so we could not open the dome.

Todd Vaccaro

Ball State University

None

ARC CCD

8.5

1

Eclipsing binary stars. Imaging sequence froze with ccd computer stuck at 100% exposure and tele computer unable to take exposure; after finding the instructions for resetting things on the camera computer I lost about half an hour. Another half hour was lost at the end of the night as tracking failed at about HA 3:30 and I missed the last half of eclipse egress.

Tomomi Otani

ERAU

Andy Baran, Brian Herbster, Johnathan Hodge

CCD

10

0

Wide binary stars observation forgyrochronology, and subdwarf B star observation for pulsation search. The focus was okay if we do not touch it (we used B filter to set the focus). The good focus position changes when we move focus even a little bit, and it requires long time to set the focus again.

Tomomi Otani

ERAU

Andy Baran, Carina Shanahan

CCD

10

0

Searching star rotation period for gyrochronology, subdwarf B star observation. It was difficult to find the right focus. We obtain a good focus at 110000, but I am not sure this value still gives up good focus tomorrow night.

Ken Rumstay

VSU

None

CCD camera

0

9

Personal stupidity. I failed to realize that light wasn't getting to the camera because the spectrograph was in the way.

Tomomi Otani

ERAU

Johnathan Hodge,

CCD

0

9

We could not connect to the computer PC. Peter is currently helping us to check this issue.

XIANMING HAN

Butler Univ

none

none

0

8

observatory was shut down for the season ahead of schedule.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

0

7

Rain early then overcast skies. Monsoon weather set in.

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson University

Kyle Pellegrin, Dr. Hartmann

ARC CCD

0

7

Didn't open the dome due to clouds

Martha Leake

Valdosta State University

none

ARC camera

7.3

0

Asteroid photometry for light curve and M27. Finished transfer before KPNO IT work today (27th, Sunday)

Ron Kaitchuck

Ball State Univ.

None

CCD imager

8

0

KIC object follow up.

Andy Baran

ERAU

n/a

CCD

8

1

No technical issues, cirrus and altocumulus clouds passed by. After observation darks show residual charge from saturated stars and the readout columns. The silicon requires to be flashed after each star image.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

spectrograph and ccd

7.5

0

Spectroscopy of Massive Stars and GRB afterglow Note: Maxim Connection to QHY guide camera kept freezing requiring software restarts. Lost one long exposure do to this. Also a very poor seeing night.

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson University

Kyle Pellegrin, Dr. Hartmann

ARC CCD

6

2

GRB afterglow observations. It was difficult to maintain the telescope focus. Other than that there are no issues to report.

Ken Rumstay

VSU

None

CCD camera

9

0

No problems, aside from the usual one of maintaining a usable focus. A better night than last night.

Ken Rumstay

VSU

None

CCD camera

7

0

AGN monitoring program. Not a great night: scattered clouds. Very difficult to maintain a usable focus.

James Webb

Florida International University

none

CCD

4

0

Blazar microvariability

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson University

Kyle Pellegrin, Dr. Hartmann

ARC CCD

6

0

GRB210610B afterglow observation

Ken Watanabe

FGCU

Nick Rimbert

CCD

6

0

Blazars

Sima Vaidya

Embry Riddle Aeronautical University

Brian Herbster, Carina Shanahan

Research Camera

5

0

Student Observation. When taking flats, the filter wheel would move by itself and exposures were taken without manually taking exposures. To fix this, the system was restarted. Throughout the observation, the telescope would not slew to a location when using the SoftPad and would only slew to the inputted RA and Dec. Focusing took an hour, and the telescope continuously lost focus many times.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

6

2

Spectroscopy of Massive Stars All worked fine. Lost hours at beginning of night to clouds.

XIANMING HAN

Butler Univ

Sera Shaughnessey

CCD

8

0

eclipsing binary

XIANMING HAN

Butler Univ

Sera Shaughnessey

CCD

0

8

none

XIANMING HAN

Butler Univ

Sera Shaughnessey

CCD

8

0

eclipsing binary

Todd Hillwig

Valparaiso University

Olivia Krugman, Sean Egan, Peyton Grimm, Will Bakke

ARC camera

8

1

Closed last hour due to dust/smoke in the air. No other problems.

Todd Hillwig

Valparaiso University

Will Bakke, Sean Egan, Olivia Krugman, Peyton Grimm

ARC camera

8

0

PN central stars.

Todd Hillwig

Valparaiso University

Peyton Grimm, Will Bakke, Sean Egan, Olivia Krugman

ARC camera

4

4

Clouds during first half of the night. PN central stars.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

3

5

Spectroscopy of Massive Magnetic Stars No problems other than clouds at sunset, clearing then thick clouds arriving after midnight KP time with full moon to obscure targets. Small wildfire still burning a few miles south of KP but west wind kept smoke away.

Lorena Sanabria

Embry Riddle Aeronautical University

Brian Herbster, Sima Vaidya

Research Camera

<1

~4

Wildfires reported 12 miles from the telescope location, domes were closed. No observation was conducted due to the weather.

Todd Vaccaro

BSU

N/A

ARC CCD

4

3

Eclipsing binary and variable stars program. Lost 30 minutes to focus issues and the last 2.5 hours due to tracking failing at +3 HA at Dec +50. Telescope was found zenith parked, I stowed it at the end of the night. No other problems.

Sima Vaidya

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Brian Herbster, Lorena Sanabria

Research Camera

3

0

Student Observation. No problems to report.

Sima Vaidya

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Lorena Sanabria, Brian Herbster

Research Camera

5

0

Student observation. Towards the end of the observation, it was seen that the declination is off by 5 degrees.

Lilyanne Pepe

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Aakash Thiyagarajan, Stephen Gillam

Leach Camera

12

0

No problems to report. roAp program

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson University

Kyle Pellegrin, Dr. Hartmann

ARC CCD

7

0

No problems to report. M51, M66, ngc3593 observation.

Ken Rumstay

VSU

Max the Cat

CCD camera

10

0

AGN monitoring program No problems to report, save the usual one of trying to establish an optimum focus.

Lilyanne Pepe

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Stephen Gillam

Leach Camera

12

0

No problems to report. roAp program

Lilyanne Pepe

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Stephen Gillam, Aakash Thiyagarajan

Leach Camera

11

1

Ace Node Service for the camera stopped working. Fixed by stopping the program, waiting two minutes, and restarting it. This problem occurred a total of 5 time while observing. roAp program

Lilyanne Pepe

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Stephen Gillam, Aakash Thiyagarajan

Leach Camera

11

1

Presumptive ACE Node Restart and Control Cabinet Recycle

James Webb

FIU

Viviana Arroyave, Luna Webb, Sparkle Webb

CCD

9

0

Blazar microvariability. Couldn't get the telescope to go to the park HA-Dec, keot telling me oout of bounds, so I left it zenith parked.

William Keel

University of Alabama

3 cats

ARC CCD

5.2

0

Dead quasar survey. Focus 363000, guider focus 12000. QSI guide camera disconnected once, but disconnect/reconnect from MaximDL worked.

Amy Lovell

Agnes Scott

CCD

8

0

Asteroid lightcurve observations. Much better with the moth-free filter wheel, no problems to report.

Amy Lovell

Agnes Scott

Ed Albin

CCD

.5

10

A training run, which was successful in demonstrating everything including a stuck filterwheel. The filter wheel is on Bessel R, and if you select another filter, it perpetually indicates "Moving to BESSEL V" but doesn't appear to move.  INIT doesn't have any effect, it goes grey normally and then just returns to indicating BESSEL R, with the message "Finding HOME for Wheel 1." Tried taking images anyway, and it seems to truly be the R filter - indicates so in the FITS headers and M51 looked like it does in R. Rebooted telescope computer, then rebooted both computers, with no effect on the problem.

Tomomi Otani

ERAU

Brian, Lorena, Sima

CCD

4

0

The first half was assigned to ERAU. My students took astrophotography for public outreach event. There was no problem to report.

Todd Vaccaro

BSU

Terracciano

Andor CCD

4.5

3

Eclipsing binary. Lost early eve flats and 2 hrs to high winds. Then lost another hour as tracking issues near end of the night at HA +3. CCD maintained -110C temp all night. 2 min darks were about 10 counts higher than bias. At the beginning of the night we had to restart both ccd/tele computers as tele control of taking images was not sending them to the right directory on the CCD machine.

Saida Caballero

FIT

N/A

Spectrograph

0

9

B star spectroscopy. Night started off very cloudy.

Saida Caballero

FIT

Kamp

Spectrograph

0

10

Weather was not looking good at the beginning of the night. Peter used the time to install the new cooling system for the CCD.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

4

5

Spectroscopy of Massive Stars -- No equipment problems but bright Moon with significant cirrus clouds for most of the night hampered observations.

Todd Vaccaro

BSU

Nicolette Terracciano

ARC

5

2.5

Eclipsing binary program. 2 min dark showed bright bottom right corner and top right corner, but 30 second darks used didn't have issues. CCD maintained -99C. Focus wasted about 1.5 hrs from finding optimum focus at the beginning of night and again 2/3 of the way through as it seemed to have lost focus. Last hour lost as tele pointed 311 Az/46 Alt in NW showing trailing stars and wouldn't stop, so I closed up.

XIANMING HAN

Butler University

Andrew Gebken

CCD

9

0

eclipsing binary The filter wheel froze frequently. In the end, I decided to use just one filter instead.

James Webb

Florida International University

none

ccd

8

1

Blazar microvariability Focus took off again. Took over an hour to get it back.

James Webb

Florida International University

none

ccd

8

1

Blazar microvariability, Focus took off and it took a while to get the focus back, Weird! Telescope was stuck on west limit when I logged in. I had to back it off the limit using t soft hand paddle.

Ted von Hippel

ERAU

no one

none used

0

all

The night originally belonged to TAMUC colleagues but was made available after the camera cooler worked. We had thought it could be useful for our purposes but found that the excessive dark current (and to some degree other problems such as focus jumps), made the telescope + imager unusable for our purposes.

James Raymond Webb

Florida International University

none

CCD

0

10

local network down

VanHamme

FIU

samec

Research Camera

0

11

Observations of eclipsing Binarirs

Saida Caballero

FIT

Klare, Fowler, Zamora

Spectrograph

8

0

Spectroscopy of Be stars

Ted von Hippel

ERAU

Sarah Kokinakkis

imaging

5

5

Observing program: identifying H alpha excess objects Problems: the high dark current on the CCD was a bigger problem than expected both operationally and for our project. Operationally, the previous observer had left the guider pick-off in the beam center and the telescope was out of focus. Add that to the unreliability of focus position and the fact that using the auxiliary instruments window repeatedly crashed ACE (necessary to first see if the pick-off mirror was in the beam and then necessary to move the pick-off), and we spent some hours before we could find targets and obtain focus. From a project perspective, it isn't clear that these data will dark-subtract well enough to see faint H alpha emission, but we'll see ...

Keefe Kamp

Florida Tech

Fowler, Klare, Le, Malagon

Spectrograph

7

0

Spectroscopy of Massive Stars. Everything went well with the spectrograph however partway through the night the Guide Camera could not be focused. Would not initialize and would only "focus" up (Positive)

Saida Caballero

FIT

N/A

Spectrograph

0

10

CCD still not in use. Planned on spectroscopy observations, but too many clouds at the start of the night.

Todd Hillwig

Valparaiso University

none

ARC camera

0

10

The CCD was warm and the temperature was rising. Yesterday was unseasonably warm for the mountain, but it appears during the power outage that something more significant happened (a problem with the cooler or with the dewar vacuum). ACE has been notified.

Tomomi Otani

ERAU

Brian Herbster

CCD

0

8

Student observation. The power was out at the beginning of the night. Although it was fixed around 12 AM EST, we already assumed that we could not observe the night before. So, I could not reach students' observers except one. So I called off for the night.

Ted von Hippel

ERAU

Sarah Kokkinakis

imaging

0

6

We had first 1/2 of night, but could never connect due to power out at dome ....

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

0

8

Power out to Dome all night. Couldn't connect to any computers.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

10

0

Spectroscopy of Massive Stars All worked fine tonight.

Saida Caballero

FIT

Kamp, Le, Miorelli, O'Brien, Fowler

CCD, spec

10

0

Standard star fields and B star spectroscopy. Had to initialize the spectrograph because even when aligned w/ fiber, no light was getting to the detector. It helped but not sure if it's initialized to the best spot.

Otani

ERAU

Brian Herbster, Dory Mauretour

CCD

0

9

Checking star rotation periods for Gyrochronology. We could not use the telescope due to the high wind speed.

Tomomi Otani

ERAU

Brian Herbster, Lorena Sanabria, Dory Mauretour, Sima Vaidya, Carina Shanahan

CCD

6

1.5

Dome azimuth is off by 15 degrees below the azimuth of the telescope (i.e. telescope azimuth=47 had to move dome azimuth to 32) Had to move dome manually with azimuth control. Seems like the auto dome was causing the azimuth of the dome to sync with the altitude of the telescope.

Ted von Hippel

ERAU

Clara Chedzoy

imaging

3

0

Clara had the first 1/2 of the night for her class project, which is to determine if image quality was sufficient to detect gravitational lensing distortion. The object wasn't available for the first 3 hours, so we used that time just to leisurely set up. The 2nd 1/2 of the night belonged to an IAC observer.

James Webb

Florida International University

Aviana Arroyaev

CCD

9

0

Blazar microvariability

James Webb

Florida International University

Viviana Arroyaev

CCD

9

0

blazar microvariability

James Webb

Florida International University

Vivaia Arroyave

CCD

8

0

Blazar microvariability

Martha Leake

Valdosta State University

none

ARC camera

4.5

4.5

Observing asteroid to establish light curve. Weather turned from poor to promising to poor, with high clouds to 100% of sky, with mid level clouds expected. No problems with equipment; parked the telescope in the stow position. Focus not bad but seeing poor all night; left at midnight MST.

Nayra Rodríguez Eugenio

IAC

none

ARC CCD

4.5

0

Student research projects on NEOs follow-up and exoplanet transit, 2nd half night. Focus 364000, did not have to change it. ACE connection system on CAMERA PC crashed at the end of the night (~11:50 UT), but images continued to be taken.

Dana

ERAU

Taylor

SARA KP

10

10

Filter wheel 1 gets stuck frequently

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson University

Kyle Pellegrin, Dr. Hartmann

ARC CCD

5

-

GRB afterglows, M33, M79

William Keel

University of Alabama

3 cats

ARC CCD

0

11

Dead quasar survey planned. Reality encountered was, as the 4m operator entered, threatening clouds, humidity, and ice on the dome.

Ken Watanabe

FGCU

Nick Rimbert

NA

0

8

Winds above 30 mph and humidity between 80 to 90 %.

William Keel

University of Alabama

2 cats

ARC CCD

10.5

0

Dead quasar survey. Focus 375000; jumped near midnight to 344000 with hysteresis. Guider focus=0.

XIANMING HAN

Butler University

no

CCD

11

0

eclipsing binary

XIANMING HAN

Butler University

Andrew Gebken

CCD

0

11

never opened due to clouds

XIANMING HAN

Butler University

Andrew Gebken

CCD

10

1

eclipsing binary Camera froze once

XIANMING HAN

Butler University

Andrew Gebken

CCD

10.5

.25

eclipsing binary camera froze once

Ted von Hippel

ERAU

Clara Chedzoy

imaging

3

3

This 1/2 night program was student training and an imaging project. ACE crashed a few hours into the night and due to the student's lack of experience and our miscommunication, we did not effectively continue observing.

Saida Caballero

FIT

Caballero, Zamora, Fowler

CCD

10

0

Standard star fields. Filter wheel got stuck during a sequence. Restarted ACE and it started working again. Guider was not responding at first, but disconnected and reconnected the cameras and it also started responding.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

0

8

High winds followed by fog/humidity closed mountain all night.

Todd Vaccaro

BSU

Nicolette Terracciano

ARC Camera

7

4

I noticed during the last hour or so that the dome AZ was off from tele pointing (30 dome, 330 tele), but field looked ok; it was at high Dec (+50); upon stowing scope dome read 159.7 and tele read 179. About 3 hrs shut for high winds, but lost an hr trying to find focus as well. The Aux Instruments window always says "Moving to..." Does it ever say it arrives? Headers in images registered that the filter was in place and the Instrument display on the far bottom left indicated the change was made.

Amy Lovell

Agnes Scott

CCD

8

0.2

Lightcurves and imaging for lab students. Tracking in West streaked even some 30s images. As reported by others, focus wandered around over the course of the night - final value 370000.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

8

0

Spectroscopy of Massive Stars

Gary Henson

ETSU

None

Spectrograph

10.5

0

Spectroscopy of Massive Stars All worked well.

Tomomi Otani

ERAU

Andy Baran

CCD

8

0

Photometry time series (sub dwarf B) As other people already reported, the focus was unstable. Once we obtain the “good” focus, even the small focus change (change the number by 5000) caused the big focus shift, and we could not obtain the previous good focus when we changed the focus back to the original value. After having this mistake three times, we learned that we should not even change the focus once we obtain a “good” focus (the star shape is round but elongated). It took ~2 hours for us to obtain the perfect focus. But everything else was working well.

Saida Caballero

FIT

Kamp

CCD

10

0

Binary massive stars. Did not attempt to use the spectrograph because it hadn't been functioning the previous night. Otherwise, did not run into any problems.

Saida Caballero

FIT

Kamp, Klare, Le, Zamora

CCD & Spectrograph

2

8

Was not able to access the spectrograph arm on the telescope computer so did not observe with spectrograph. Had trouble focusing CCD and clouds were forecast to move in so closed for the night.

Walter Van Hamme

FIU

Samec

FLI camera

6

6

Observations and analysis of Eclipsing Binary Systems, AH Gem and NSVS506667. Software stalled.

Walter Van Hamme

FIU

Samec

FLI Camera

11 hours

1

Observations of Eclipsing Binaries AH Gem and NSVS506667.

William Keel

University of Alabama

3 cats

ARC CCD

10

0.7

Galaxies in H-alpha, dead quasar survey. Focus 411000; major shift around midnight needing 45 minutes to get a new good value. Best guider focus -1000, in some directions the guider images always have substructure which compromised the quality of EW guiding.

XIANMING HAN

Butler Univ

Andrew Gebken

CCD

11

0

Eclipsing binary

William Keel

University of Alabama

3 cats

ARC CCD

10

0.5

Dead quasar survey. Focus 409000 - huge shift from a week ago, took over 30 minutes to find an adequate focus.Guider focus 0. RAdmin to telescope computer froze frequently (but not for CCD computer). Filter wheel 1 needed initialization multiple times early in the night.

James webb

Florida International University

Viviana Arroyave, Luna Webb, Sparkle Webb

CCD

0

10

blazar microvariability Cloudy all evening, and super cloudy in the morning. Didn't open.

Nayra Rodriguez Eugenio

IAC

none

ARC CCD

2.5

1.5

Student research projects on stellar variability. Observations with the students cancelled because of reported connection problems during the first half of the night, but I was able to connect around 9:00 UT and observe one of the program objects. Approx. one hour was needed to restart the system from scratch and get focus.

Ted von Hippel

ERAU

Kayla Taylor, Jack McDonald, Sarah K

imaging

0

6

Had training planned with three students but could not connect to SARA-KP. Gary informs me that LTO reports indicate there was a power failure at the end of the previous night, so presumably some computers in the SARA dome need to be restarted. Our team had the first 1/2 night. I've informed Nayra Eugenio (IAC) who had the 2nd 1/2 night.

Martha A. Leake

Valdosta. State University

none

Andor

0

10.75

Asteroid photometry planned, but bad weather prevented any observing. Started with high winds and threatening clouds, some clear skies, but winds still high, clouds moved in and humidity increased for rest of the night. The all sky camera view looks iced over. I never opened up and did not log in to SARA, just monitored the weather.

Dana

ERAU

Matt Haffner

SARA KP

8

3

Filter wheel 1 seems to have some trouble switching between the H-Alpha filter and others. It gets stuck and sometimes will go to the wrong filter.

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson University

Meenakshi Rajagopal, Kyle Pellegrin, Dr. Hartmann

ARC CCD

9

0

BL lacs, GRB afterglows, galaxies. No problems to report :)

William Keel

University of Alabama

3 cats

ARC CCD

12

0

Dead quasar survey. Focus 512000; guider focus 0. Telescope computer had 15-minute period around 0200 local time where I could not connect via RAdmin from my PC, although I could connect with VNC and the CCD computer could connect both to my machine and the telescope computer via RAdmin. This might have been a local weirdness. My data suffered for much of the night from having a 3rd-magnitude star streak through the field during sky flats at the start of the night - extra charge showed up in those columns for most of the night. Note to self...

XIANMING HAN

Butler University

Andrew Gebken

CCD

4

7

Eclipsing binary Clouds in the early evening and after midnight (Kitt Peak time).

XIANMING HAN

Butler University

Andrew Gebken

CCD

11.5

0

Eclipsing binary

XIANMING HAN

Butler University

Andrew Gebken

CCD

11.5

0

Eclipsing binary

XIANMING HAN

Butler University

Andrew Gebken

CCD

0

11

None. Dome status display was (and still is) blank, and the dome does not appear to be responding to commands. Tried to recycle power to the ACE control cabinet, which did not fix the problem. The dome was functioning normally at the end of the previous night. But apparently, the telescope computer rebooted sometimes during the day, and the telescope computer was at the Windows log in screen at the beginning of the night.

Xianming Han

Butler University

Andrew Gebken

CCD

11

.5

Eclipsing binary CCD camera froze

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

0

8

Mostly cloudy all night so never opened.

Saida Caballero

FIT

Kamp

CCD

0

12

Massive Binary stars. Too cloudy.

Ted von Hippel

ERAU

none

imaging

0

0

I had the first 1/2 of the night, but due to lack of organization on my part, I forgot.

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson university

Kyle Pellegrin, Dr. Hartmann

ARC CCD

0

9

GRB afterglows, M33. Didn’t open due to the cloudy weather.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

0

9

Power out to Dome due to earlier winter storm. Power back up by late afternoon, but light to heavy cirrus clouds progressively getting worse so never opened.

Saida Caballero

FIT

N/A

CCD

0

10

Massive stars. Did not open due to poor weather.

William Keel

University of Alabama

no cats

ARC CCD

0

11

Grad training. Or that was the plan. I assume there was snow because both webcams are iced over.

William Keel

University of Alabama

No cats

ARC CCD

0

11

Grad training. Or that was the plan. I assume there was snow because both webcams are iced over.

Veronique Petit

UD

None

Spectrograph

0

8

Spectroscopy of massive stars. 100% humidity, seems unlikely to clear out before the end of the night.

Saida Caballero

FIT

N/A

CCD

0

10

Massive binary stars

XIANMING HAN

Butler University

None

CCD

0

12

None.

Todd Hillwig

Valparaiso University

None

Andor CCD

0

12

None.

William Keel

University of Alabama

3 cats

ARC CCD

4.5

7

BL Lac, Galaxy Zoo nebula followup. Focus 512000 (worked well enough I was afraid to touch it any more). Guider focus=0; reset guider x,y speeds for ARC camera to -1, -1.

james Webb

Florida International University

Viviana Arroyave, Luna Webb, Sparkle Webb

CCD

8

0

Blazar microvariability

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson University

Dr. Hartmann, Kyle Pellegrin

ARC CCD

8

-

GRB afterglows, M33, M66, M79

Martha Leake

Valdosta State University

Cassidy Swenson from Tools class

ARC camera

12.5 hours

0 hours

Images of clusters and galaxy for Tools, and asteroid photometry later. Needed to cancel slew and restart early in evening; restart successful; focusing not the best, but no large slips noted. Asteroids (using ASTFINDER from Lowell) typically slightly south and west of center of frame. No large problems and great weather and sky.

Veronique Petit

UD

Matt Shultz

Spectrograph

10 hours

0

Spectroscopy of massive stars. All good, apart for the ASCOM camera freezing a few times, which then crashes Maxim. Autoguiding on the fiber was OK, even with the wind. The focus of the telescope was still a bit finicky. The Orion nebula looks good on the ASCOM, with only a 0.1s exposure. I recorded ~15 short videos on the operation of the spectrograph, if anybody is interested.

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson University

Kyle Pellegrin

ARC CCD

6

-

GRB afterglows, M31. Focus was stable at 520000.

Todd Vaccaro

Ball State University

Robert Berrington

ARC CCD

10

1

Eclipsing binaries. Some time (~1hr) lost to auto guider tracking off field and focusing needing adjusting (from 490000 to 520000) when going from target in west to target in east. Seeing never better than about 4"

Steve Gillam

ERAU

None

ARC camera

13

0

RoAp stars, variables in open clusters, Gyrochronology.

Stephen Gillam

ERAU

None

ARC Camera

12

1

RoAp stars, young clusters, and Gyrochronology.

Alec Neal

Ball State University

Robert Berrington, Todd Vaccaro, Daniel Brossard

ARC

7

1

Slightly hazy, focus was mediocre for the first half of the night.

Walter Van Hamme

FIU

Samec, Faulkner, Hill

ARC camera 2KX2K

10

1

One light curve of UU Cam completed. 3 hours observations on NSVS00389401 done. Focus was acceptable.

Walter Van Hamme

FIU

Samec, Hill, Faulkner

ARC Camera 2KX2K

11

0

Observations of NSVS00839401 and UU Cam. Focus was acceptable at 505000.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

11

0

Spectroscopy of Massive Stars, very productive night! Clear, calm, dry weather, focus pretty stable once achieved, guiding/tracking very good.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

6

4

Spectroscopy of Massive Stars, wide band of thick cirrus clouds moved through with bright moon so even bright stars faded with too little flux for observations.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

none

0

10

Night not scheduled but filling in Bad Weather report for usage statistics as mountain was closed most of night due to threatening weather.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

none

0

10

Night not scheduled but noted mountain closed due to poor weather so just filling in usage table for weather statistics.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

spectrograph

0

10

Lost all night due to clouds, fog, high humidity.

XIANMING HAN

Butler University

none

CCD

12

0.5

eclipsing binary, GRB

Alec Neal

Ball State University

Robert Berrington

ARC

8

0

Stella3D crashed whenever clicked on. Difficult to get spectroscope to work (possibly from user inexperience).

William Keel

University of Alabama

Cats

ARC CCD

8.5

0.75

Dead quasar survey; took over after Peter Mack conjunction imaging. Spent first 45 minutes focusing CCD and guider. (Autoguider is back!) Focus 515000-520000; guider focus 6500. Guider settings for ARC camera: X speed=-1, Y speed = -1.

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson University

Dr. Hartmann, Kyle Pellegrin

ARC CCD

7

0

Observed the field of GRB 20201216C , M33. The focus was good all night at 519 000.

Steve Gillam

ERAU

Leila Alamos

ARC camera

13

0

Short-period variables.

Steve Gillam

ERAU

Leila Alamos

ARC CCD

10

2

RoAp stars. The focus continued to be problem. The smallest repeatable unit of secondary mirror motion appeared to 15,000 - 25,000 encoder units. This made it impossible to focus precisely. Consistent changes in FWHM of star images resulted when jogging the focus un the "+" direction. There was not consistent focusing behavior when jogging in "-" direction. At the star of the night on 12/14 stars were focused at 300,000 units. (1.0- 1.5" seeing in a 15 sec exposure.) on 12/15, the best focus (again 1.0' - 2.0" FWHM) was obtained at 520,200 units. At one point, we moved the mirror back to the zero and re-fucsed. This did not improve the focusing performance. Further, the focus radically changed when we moved to a new target.

Steve Gillam

ERAU

Leila Alamos

ARC camera

10

0

Rapidly-oscillating Ap stars. The sky was clear and the transparency very high all night. We had difficulty focusing. It seemed that changes in focus from a few hundred to 6000 units made no difference to FWHMs. FWHMs would change minutes after the focus had been changed. We could not make small changes to the FWHM. It appeared that the stars were either in focus (at around 300000 units) or they were donuts.

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson University

Kyle Pellegrin

ARC CCD

4

6

GRB afterglows, Ring Nebula. Hours were lost due to cloud cover and increasing humidity.

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson University

Kyle Pellegrin

ARC CCD

4

6

GRB afterglows, ring nebula... Some hours were lost due to t

William Keel

University of Alabama

Fluffiest Cat

ARC camera

0

12

Dead-quasar survey. Or that was the plan. Gave up watching humidity at 0100 MST.

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson University

-

ARC CCD

0

12

GRB afterglows. Could not observe due to clouds and rain.

Keefe Kamp

Florida Tech

Me, Myself and I

Spectrograph

0

14

Spectrograph darks were taken without a problem, but then clouds came.

Todd Vaccaro

Ball State University

Melanie Isenbarger

Leach Camera

9

2

Lost 2 hrs messing with focus

Keefe Kamp

Florida Tech

Sydney, Tobolski, Minh Le, Saida Caballero

ARC CCD, Spectrograph

7

0

Cyg X-1 and Be Star Spectroscopy. Only minor problems occurred. During Use of the ARC CCD, a few of the exposure there are issues tracking causing the stars to line; however it stopped without intervention. One of our spectra did not readout. MaximDL froze, saying "reading" for several minutes.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

CCD & Spectrograph

8

2

Excellent track Rate of 15.055, +0.011 Spectroscopy of Massive Stars and M31 H-alpha Monitoring

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

CCD & Spectrograph

8

2

Spectroscopy of Massive Magnetic Stars and Colliding Wind Binaries, Monitoring M31 in H-alpha ----- Tracking Rates 15.055, +0.011 excellent for 5 min exposure on M31

Nayra Rodriguez

IAC

none

ARC CCD

8

3

Student research projects on exoplanet transits. The focus was good practically all night at 335000. Had to close around 01:30 MST due to wind speeds ~ 40 mph.

William Keel

University of Alabama

Fluffiest Cat

ARC CCD

10

0

Galaxies in H-alpha. Tweaked track rates in absence of guider, starting with Gary Henson's custom rates. Focus 335000-327000.

Gary Henson

ETSU

Rutherford

Spectrograph and CCD

11

0

Spectroscopy of Massive Stars and H-Alpha monitoring of M31 Found Track Rate of 15.055 RA and +0.0102 Dec to be solid for M31 Tracking Good in all parts of sky, but needed several minutes for E/W oscillations to settle when pointing to low west targets.

Xianming Han

Butler University

none

CCD

11

0

eclipsing binary. The focus was good enough at the beginning of the night, so I did not want to touch it.

Todd Hillwig

Valparaiso University

None

ARC CCD

12

0

Planetary nebula central star monitoring. Stars were oval, elongated, doubled, or streaked in at least 2/3 of the images, at five minutes. Most stable in the northwest.

Samalka Anandagoda

Clemson University

Kyle Pellegrin

CCD

10

2

M3N 2008-12a, GRB afterglows. The telescope focus was good in the beginning of the night (399 000). But then it went out of focus during the latter part of the night and was extremely difficult to get it back to focus. Other than that everything worked fine.

Gary Henson

ETSU

none

Spectrograph

7

2

Spectroscopy of Massive Stars Todd Hillwig could not connect through VNC (servers not yet installed and running). ACE will fix, but took over night at last minute from Todd since weather excellent.

Saida Caballero

FIT

Kamp, Le, Abraham, o'Brien

CCD

11

0

There were pointing issues where the telescope seemed to oscillate back in forth from its position, making the stars appear elongated. Also, had the recurring issue where the telescope went out of focus and took a while to get back to a focus that worked. There were a few times the humidity spiked but cam back to normal levels. This may be an issue with the WYIN's humidity instrument specifically.

Nayra Rodriguez

Nayra Rodriguez

Nayra Rodriguez

Nayra Rodriguez

Nayra Rodriguez

Nayra Rodriguez

Test for student research projects on exoplanet transits. It was difficult to get focus the first time, and need to refocus every one-two hours. ~45 min trying to use autoguiding with no luck. The connection with ACE Tel was down on three occasions. Had to close due to high humidity at the end of the night.

Xianming Han

Butler University

none

CCD

11

0.5

eclipsing binary. It was extremely hard to focus. Moving by 5000 produces random effect on the focus. So getting focused is a matter of luck.

Veronique Petit

UD/MCAO

None

Spectro

9

0

Used the spectrograph all night. Maxim DL crashed a few times when switching from the ASCOM to the FLI. Not that when this happens, the setpoint of the FLI cooler goes back to 10 degrees. When this happens, one needs to remember to start the coolers back AND put the setpoint down. Tracking and guiding worked perfectly all night, even in the East.