SARA-RM Report Archive

Date	Name	Other Observers	Instrument	Hours Observed	Hours Lost	Reason	Observing Program
05/25/2023	William Keel	not even time for cats to arrive	Andor CCD	0	9	Humidity	Transient night. If it wasn't the humidity it was the clouds .I did a full software restart in the afternoon because images were not displaying to DS9.
05/24/2023	William C. Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	5	4	Humidity	AGN clouds, M101. Focus 97020, guide focus 0. Humidity high at start and end of night.
05/23/2023	Kaylee Grace	Judi Provencal, Zach Savery, Henry Sanford-Crane	Andor	7	0.5	Connection Issues	Imaged M101 supernova, observed pulsating star GD358. Had some issues with the dome losing alignment at the beginning of the night. The problem was resolved by parking the dome.
05/21/2023	Priya Gokuldass	None	CCD	0	12	Software/Control PC Issues	Had issues with saving the images. It kept saying exposing and got stuck. Had to reboot the telescope and camera computer and stope the node service to resolve the issue. Then the dome state became unknown. Rebooted the computer and recycled the power, nothing worked. Tried to home the dome but the ACE crashed.
05/18/2023	William Keel	2 cats	Andor CCD	9	0	No problems to report	[O III] clouds around AGN hosts. Dome stopped moving once - required 3 azimuth recycles plus setting first to park position before it responded normally. Focus 98620, guider focus 0-70 depending on filter. Pickup of stray line voltage during readout looks reduced, improving low-background performance.
05/17/2023	Stephen Gillam	Stephen Barnier, Jacob Romeo, Avery Reynolds, Kaelyn Weddle	Andor Camera	0	12	Humidity	Micro-variables.
05/16/2023	Stephen Gillam	Stephen Barnier, Jacob Romeo, Avery Reynolds, Kaelyn Weddle	Andor Camera	12	0	Equipment Failure	Micro-variables. Dome stopped tracking the scope. This was remedied by recycling the ACE Node service.
05/15/2023	Stephen Gillam	Jacob Romeo, Stephen Barnier, Avery Reynolds, Kaelyn Weddle,	Andor Camera	5	6	Clouds	Micro-variables. The dome would not home at the start of the night. It was tracking the telescope but offset from the corrected azimuth. This was remedied by stopping and starting the ACE Node service.
05/13/2023	Roi Alonso	None	CCD	9	0	No problems to report	No problems, entire night with autoguider. Dome did not go through the 313 az, and tracked ok all night.
05/13/2023	Ken Rumstay	Stefan Geier	Andor Camera	9.5	0.5	No problems to report	Stefan took the first four hours, as I had to attend a funereal event in the afternoon. He observed the asteroid 471 Papagena; I was delighted to learn that a second minor planet was named for a character from Die Zauberflöte (the first being 539 Pamina). He noted that when starting the dome was not properly aligned with the telescope, but that was quickly remedied thanks to advice from Bill Keel. I took over at about 1:30 UT, and observed AGNs until dawn with no difficulties.
05/10/2023	Scott Joffre	Dieter Hartmann	RM Camera	0	all	Wind	Wind speeds starting around 8:30 UTC at 40 km/hr and then rose to ~55 km/hr and were sustained for much of the night.
05/08/2023	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	8	2	Wind	Asteroid. High winds prevented opening for the first couple of hours. Then, the dome would not track accurately but after three resets began to do so. Dome shutter also acted up a bit but a reset took care of that also. After that-- no problems.
05/06/2023	Xianming Han	none	ccd	6	2	Equipment Failure	Dome stopped tracking and could not move. After fixing this problem following the instruction in the text file, the shutter could not open. After some time, the shutter opened, but now the dome did not move, and could not fixed following the instructions. At the end of the night and stowed the telescope, the dome mysteriously started moving.
05/05/2023	Tom Rutherford	Gary Henson	CCD	8	1	Humidity	Exoplanets. Dome would not track at first but a reset took care of it. Everything else went well, although humidity started to climb toward morning so I closed up about an hour before twilight began.
05/03/2023	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	8	1	No problems to report	Exoplanets. Some passing clouds at first but then clear the remainder of the night.
05/02/2023	William Keel	nobody	Andor CCD	8	1	Clouds	Galaxies in H-alpha. Focus 98842, guide focus +100.
04/27/2023	Matt A Wood	NA	Andor	10	0	No problems to report	Time series observations of white dwarf and cataclysmic variable. Excellent night.
04/27/2023	Matt A Wood	NA	Andor	9	1	Equipment Failure	REVISED for ORM: 1) Dome stuck beginning of night. Restarted system a couple times and eventually it worked rest of night. 2) Telescope got stuck in NW at just less than 2 airmasses. Tried to back out with handpaddle, but no joy. Brian Brondel (ACE) logged in and got it fixed (thanks, Brian!).
04/26/2023	Matt A Wood	NA	Andor	10	0	No problems to report	Time Series observations of cataclysmic variables. Focus 444000
04/23/2023	Priya Gokuldass	None	CCD	9	0	No problems to report	ulGRB host galaxies observation
04/21/2023	Roi Alonso	none	andor	8	0	No problems to report	WDs photometry. Some issues with the dome at the beginning, needing to home it a couple of times. Autoguider camera not responding.
04/20/2023	Amy Lovell	AST200L	CCD	0	8	Humidity	Student projects - started too humid and then as humidity decreased wind picked up...
04/18/2023	Yong Sheng	Dieter Hartmann	Andor CCD griz	8	1	Software/Control PC Issues	The dome suddenly stopped removing and blocked the view of the telescope. This happened three times and I have to restart the telescope and recycle the dome power multiple times to fix it. The trailing happened once but it was fixed when I pointed to another source.
04/17/2023	Matt Wood	NA	Andor	0	11	Humidity	High humidity. Didn't open.
04/14/2023	Yong Sheng	Dieter Hartmann	Andor CCD griz	0	11	Equipment Failure	The RM telescope is till out of service
04/08/2023	Martha Leake	Ryan B.	CCD	0	9	Equipment Failure	Equipment not ready for observations. The night is also predicted to be cloudy for 8-9 hours.
03/29/2023	Yong Sheng	Dieter Hartmann	Andor CCD griz	0	11	Equipment Failure	The RM is still not operational due to the primary mirror and focus issue
03/29/2023	Yong Sheng	Dieter Hartmann	Andor CCD griz	0	11	Equipment Failure	RM is still not operational (the mirror and focus issues)
03/21/2023	Alex McDaniel	None	Andor CCD	0	8	Equipment Failure	Clemson blazar study. JKT still down
03/19/2023	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	0	10	Equipment Failure	telescope still not working?
03/18/2023	Martha Leake	none	ARC	0	9.5	Other	No announcement of repaired part has been made; it's there, but perhaps has not been delivered or installed yet.
03/12/2023	Roi Alonso	none	ccd	0	11	Equipment Failure	Previous reports indicate "Observatory offline until further notice", due to focusing issues.
03/09/2023	Gary Henson	none	ccd	0	8	Equipment Failure	Observatory offline until Focus problem fixed.
03/06/2023	Gary Henson	Rutherford	Andor CCD	0	8	Equipment Failure	ACE was working on Focus problem during early evening. Did not see announcement of a fix. Observations not possible with current focus status.
03/04/2023	Isaiah Cox	Yong Sheng, Dieter Hartmann	CCD	0	9	Equipment Failure	Clemson blazar study. Could not focus. Stars appear asymmetrical. No observations could be done.
03/03/2023	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	0	8	Equipment Failure	Triangular stars with FWHM at best focus of about 11 (my target could not be detected in the images). Many images had very significant trailing though that settled down after a while.
02/28/2023	Javier Licandro	Hissa Medeiros	Andor camera (JKT)	0	10	Equipment Failure	We had focus issues. The target and stars in the field were a non uniform shape (as triangle shape).
02/26/2023	Walter Van Hamme	Samec	CCD	0	11	Connection Issues	Scope will not respond to contact. No observing possible.
02/24/2023	Stephen D. Gillam	Pepe, Romeo, Vansadia	ARC Camera	0	13	Connection Issues	Micro-variables. Unable to connect to the 0RM computers. This is probably due to the breaker issue reported earlier this week.
02/23/2023	Kurtis Williams	none	Andor	0	11	Humidity	High humidity and likely icing, so did not open dome. Computers unreachable anyway. I suggest either a piece of tape on the circuit breaker saying "!No tocar!" or electrifying the circuit breaker to give someone a nasty shock if they try to turn it off.
02/22/2023	Todd Vaccaro	N/A	Andor CCD	0	10	Humidity	Although the weather was horrible, I was never able to connect to any of the computers nor was someone who was on the mountain at the time.
02/19/2023	Roi Alonso	none	ccd	0	11	Humidity	humidity and "weather procedures are in force"
02/15/2023	james Webb	Observational Class	CCD	0	8	Other	Smoke warnings
02/18/2023	Martha Leake	none	Andor	0	11.5	Other	Notification that "ING bad weather procedures are in force." Problems could occur because of reduced staff and ice on domes as Brian noted. Did not open. Weather is improving, but humidity exceeded 80% several times before midnight UT.
02/17/2023	Kurtis Williams	none	Andor	0	11	Snow	Ice on domes, humidity, clouds, and rain. I decided it probably was not worthwhile to open.
02/16/2023	Kurtis Williams	none	Andor	0	11	Snow	Observatory closed due to snow and ice on dome.
02/14/2023	K.Watanabe	Nick Rimbert	CCD	0	10	Connection Issues	Could not connect to any of the computers.
02/13/2023	Kurtis Williams	none	Andor	0	11	Snow	Although most observatories are reporting safe conditions, Liverpool Telescope is reporting dome ice. Since I cannot see our dome exterior, staying closed for safety tonight.
02/12/2023	Kurtis Williams	none	Andor	0	11	Snow	High humidity, cold temps, snow on ground, and other enclosures reporting ice make it unsafe to open.
02/10/2023	Martha Leake	Jordan Hewins	Arc	0	10.3	Humidity	Planned to view asteroids, but high humidity, some rain and ice continue all night. Did not open. (Site listed weather as "bad" and all facilities were closed. Amended my report slightly; date of run was 2/10/23
02/11/2023	Martha Leake	Jordan Hewins	Andor	0	10.3	Humidity	Humidity over 90% most of night; some rain or snow; labeled "bad weather conditions." Did not open. Conditions did not improve.
02/08/2023	Ken Rumstay	None	CCD camera	0	10	Other	In light of recent connection and dome problems, and the forecast for increasing clouds during the night and rain on Thursday, I decided not to risk opening the dome.
02/05/2023	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	0	10	Connection Issues	Unable to connect to any of the computers
02/03/2023	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	0	10	Connection Issues	Unable to connect to any of the computers
01/30/2023	Todd Hillwig	None	ARC camera	0	10	Humidity	Humidity and clouds.
01/31/2023	Yong Sheng	Dieter Hartmann	Andor CCD griz	0	11	Humidity	The humidity is 96%, I can't observe at all. Clemson University blazar study.
01/27/2023	Xianming Han	Josh Wanninger	CCD	10	0	Other	The dome stopped rotating again near the end of the night.
01/29/2023	Roi Alonso	none	CCD	0	11	Humidity	Humidity and ice.
01/28/2023	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	0	11	Humidity	humidity over 90% and temps around freezing. Never opened
01/25/2023	Xianming Han	none	CCD	10	0	Equipment Failure	Dome stopped tracking the telescope near sunrise, so not sure if data is effected or not.
01/25/2023	Xianming Han	none	CCD	0	10	Connection Issues	Connection to SARA RM was not possible from anywhere, and was not fixed by evening.
01/21/2023	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	0	11	Wind	Was able to focus the telescope, then the wind increased and I had to close. Now 100% humidity. BE CAREFUL, THE ING WEATHER PAGE IS FROZEN.
01/20/2023	Kurtis Williams	Olive (feline)	Andor	11	1	Software/Control PC Issues	White dwarf time series. Lost hour to telescope computer thinking telescope HA was out of limits. ACE/Brian quickly responded and found problem was an incorrect setting on control card. Some additional time lost as various things needed homing (dome, guider stage). Autoguider worked well but guider focus was at about 250.
01/19/2023	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	0	13	Connection Issues	Telescope continues to not pick up my calls and is not returning my messages either.
01/18/2023	Steve Gillam	Divyeshwari Vansadia, Stephen Barnier	None	0	12	Connection Issues	Micro-variables.
01/16/2023	Todd Hillwig	None	Andor CCD	0	10	Connection Issues	Could not connect to computers.
01/15/2023	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	0	11	Connection Issues	Unable to connect o any SARA RM computers
01/13/2023	Javier Licandro	Hissa Medeiros	Andor camera (JKT)	0	10	Equipment Failure	Asteroid photometry. Problems with Az limites. I did the full restart five times and not fix it.
01/12/2023	Gary Henson	Rutherford	Andor CCD	0	6	Wind	Had connection issue in that both Radmin and VNC would connect, but no screen display under Radmin and frozen controls under VNC for all computers. Finally did remote computer restart through Radmin tools and connections back to normal. High winds for early evening with some very strong gusts so gave up early.
01/11/2023	Priya Gokuldass	none	CCD	0	08	Humidity	Ultra long GRB host galaxy observation. Rain and high humidity.
01/09/2023	William Keel	2 cats	Andor CCD	12	0	No problems to report	Galaxies in narrowband ([O III] before moonrise, H-alpha after). Focus 96327, guider focus -100. Reset dome azimuth once. Had to enable SAOimage display for QSI CD to focus guider and couldn't figure out how to turn that off (since new interface does not have radio buttons for Connector Client perspective options), so each new image while guiding vanished after 5 second. (No luck getting response to email queries on this during the night).
01/07/2023	Gary Henson	Rutherford	Andor CCD	8	0	No problems to report	Nova Monitoring in M31, Exoplanet Search in NGC1245
01/06/2023	Gary Henson	Rutherford	Andor CCD	8	0	No problems to report	Nova monitoring in M31, Exoplanet Search in NGC 1245
01/05/2023	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	8	0.5	Equipment Failure	Dome failed to track on two occasions-- resetting it seemed to fix it each time. M31, NGC 1245.
01/04/2023	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	8	0	No problems to report	M 31, NGC 1245.
01/02/2023	William Keel	2 cats	Andor CCD	0	13	Humidity	If it wasn't the humidity (which is always was), it was the clouds, or the rain, or even the particulate levels.
12/27/2022	William Keel	2 cats	Andor CCD	0	12	Clouds	Partly cloudy in afternoon. During the night, clouds, humidity, wind, and dust level passed conspired at least two at a time.
12/24/2022	Dr. Todd Vaccaro	None	Andor CCD	10	1	Software/Control PC Issues	Eclipsing binaries. Had some tracking issues early on with a target at Az 229 and Alt 76 (deg) off and on; then an hour or so in the dome indicated vignetting, which got worse as the dome had stopped; resetting the dome Az fixed it. I noticed that the Tele PC time is set for UT+1 (Casablanca) while the CCD PC is on UT and time stamping headers. I was only able to control the camera from the CCD side. The focusing routine worked well. The tele was parked at the Z position when I started.
12/21/2022	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	8	0	No problems to report	M31. Standard stars.
12/20/2022	Gary Henson	Rutherford	Andor CCD	7.5	0	No problems to report	H-alpha monitoring of M31 and Variable Search in Open Cluster NGC1245 One instance of dome azimuth motion failure during slew but Azimuth power recycle restored control for rest of the night.
12/14/2022	Ken Rumstay	None	Andor CCD camera	3	9	Equipment Failure	I observed for about three hours without problem. I then had to briefly leave to attend to some family business, so stowed the telescope and closed the dome. When I returned and tried to open the dome, the shutter would only open about 15-20% of the way. It looks as though something might be obstructing the shutters, though I don’t see anything obvious in the dome camera image. Right now the telescope is safely stowed with the dome closed. The wind speed is currently averaging 30-35 km/hr, with gusts up to 50 km/hr.
12/13/2022	Kurtis A. Williams	none	Andor	6	6	Humidity	White dwarf time series photometry. Humidity was borderline until about 1am and then spiked well over the limit, so I closed. Seeing was lousy but good enough. Could not run autoguider - QSI camera hung on readout and would only reset with Client Connector restart.
12/12/2022	Kurtis Williams	none	Andor	0	12	Connection Issues	Unable to connect to any computers nor the webcam webpage. I can reach webpages of other mountain observatories. Brian Murphy was also unable to reach the computers. Please check connections. (Weather was borderline anyway)
12/09/2022	Priya Gokuldass	None	CCD	0	10	Humidity	ULGRB host galaxy observation. High humidity.
12/02/2022	Roi Alonso	none	Andor	0	11	Humidity	Rain
12/01/2022	Javier Licandro	Hissa Medeiros	Andor camera (JKT)	3	7	Humidity	Asteroid photometry
11/30/2022	Alex McDaniel	Dieter Hartmann	Andor CCD	11	0	No problems to report	Clemson Blazar Photo-z measurement program.
11/29/2022	Priya Gokuldass	None	CCD	9	0	Connection Issues	Ultra long GRB host galaxy observation. Connection got cut twice mid observation but was able to connect again within few seconds.
11/28/2022	Roi Alonso	None	Andor	11	0.1	Equipment Failure	WDs photometry. Autoguiding working the whole night (had to cycle camera power before the beginning of night). A few minutes lost due to loss of tracking at high airmass (close to 2) in the NW direction. Other than that, perfect night.
11/23/2022	Javier Licandro	Hissa Medeiros	Andor camera (JKT)	0	10	Other	Asteroid photometry. The lights of the dome were ON.
11/15/2022	Javier Licandro	Hissa Medeiros	Andor camera (JKT)	10	0	No problems to report	Asteroid Photometry
11/20/2022	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	13	0	No problems to report	Dead quasar survey, Galaxy Zoo followup. Focus 98600. Had to restart everything to get dome rotation and guider connected; guider worked fine afterward. Telescope PC is stuck in caps lock, did not take time to reboot to fix that. Autofocus fails from camera computer. not from telescope PC.
11/19/2022	Tom Rutherford	Gary Henson	CCD	9	0	No problems to report	M31, NGC 1245
11/12/2022	William Keel	2 cats	Andor CCD	0	11	Clouds	Nearer clouds than I had in mind.
11/11/2022	Yong Sheng	Dieter Hartmann	Andor CCD griz	10	0	No problems to report	Clemson blazar study
11/08/2022	Priya Gokuldass	None	CCD	5	5	Equipment Failure	GRB host galaxy observation. Had to cycle power to computers at the beginning of the night. Then there was issue with the dome. If dome open or close was clicked, ACE kept crashing every time as well. Had to home it and recycle power to azimuth couple of times to fix the issue. Also had to do full restart once. Then again during the middle of the observation, the dome crashed and dome vignetting message was displayed. Tried the full restart but this time had no luck. Dome vignetting message was still displayed and there was issues with azimuth as well. Closed the telescope after couple of hours. Mirror covers are still non-functional.
11/06/2022	Ross Silver	Dieter, Yong	CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Photometric redshifts of blazars.
11/04/2022	Javier Licandro	Hissa Medeiros	Andor camera (JKT)	8	0	Software/Control PC Issues	Asteroid photometry. No big problems to report. The dome stopped rotating at az 313. Dome az reset and homing dome to solve it.
11/03/2022	Roi Alonso	none	Andor CCD	9	1	Other	WDs photometry. Had to re-start both computers at the beginning of night (dome ajar, and clocks frozen), and camera power to get the autoguider working. After that, the usual stuff: dome stopped rotating (tracking) at az 313. Dome az reset and homing dome to solve it.
11/01/2022	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	9	0	No problems to report	M31, NGC 1245
10/31/2022	Matt A Wood	NA	Andor	12	0.5	Software/Control PC Issues	Time series photometry of cataclysmic variables. Thanks Kurtis for getting the night started. Kurtis reported he rebooted but still autoguider not working. Autofocus not working. Otherwise the night was beautiful - great data. Dropbox keeps crashing - one option is to remove and reinstall. Let me know if you'd like me to do that.
10/29/2022	Jim Webb	none	CCD	0	8	Other	Blazars
10/30/2022	Matt Wood	NA	Andor	12	0	Other	Time series photometry of cataclysmic variables. Thanks Kurtis for helping me get autoguider going. AG would not start on 3rd target for the night. It would take single images but 'start' button had no apparent effect. Free guiding was good enough for 30-s exposures. Camera computer warning that disk is nearly full.
10/27/2022	William Keel	Class, cats	Andor CCD	11.5	0	No problems to report	Class demo plus galaxy imaging. Had to restart including cycling camera power to get autoguider working, but after that it worked reliably. <1" seeing much of night. Focus 98630, guider focus 1000.
10/25/2022	Todd Hillwig	Introductory Astronomy students	Andor CCD	8	3	Humidity	Clouds cleared and humidity dropped around sunset. Humidity rose again in the second half of the night and had to close for the final 3 hours.
10/24/2022	Todd Hillwig	None	Andor CCD	0	10	Clouds	Clouds all night.
10/25/2022	Javier Licandro	Hissa Medeiros	Andor camera (JKT)	8	0	No problems to report	Astroid photometry
10/14/2022	Javier Licandro	Hissa Medeiros	Andor camera (JKT)	0	8	Humidity	Asteroid photometry.
10/23/2022	Ken Rumstay	None	Andor CCD camera	9	2	Humidity	AGN monitoring program. Also observed GRB 221009A for Kyle Pellegrin at Clemson University. I had to restart the system at the beginning of the night, but experienced no technical problems after that. The tracking was excellent; the telescope pointed slightly east of target after slewing. Clouds rolled in around midnight EDT (about two hours before morning twilight), and the humidity increased past 8-%; at that point I closed the dome and called it a night.
10/21/2022	Roi Alonso	none	CCD	0	9	Humidity	Humidity.
10/21/2022	Kyle Pellegrin	Todd Vaccarro	CCD	0	10	Clouds	Dr. Vaccaro logged in and found the telescope parked off of position (at approx. 1hr and altitude of 60 degrees). Observations were unsuccessful due to clouds. Dr. Vaccaro then offered remaining time to Kyle and he was unable to observe due to clouds as well.
10/20/2022	Ken Watanabe	Nicolas Rimbert	CCD	6	0	No problems to report	Blazars.
10/18/2022	Matt Wood	NA	Andor CCD	12	0	Software/Control PC Issues	Time series photometry of intermediate polars. System crashed during skyflats, so had to do the full reset. Otherwise, excellent night. Thanks to Kurtis and Brian for availability to answer questions.
10/18/2022	Matt Wood	Kurtis Williams	Andor	12	0.5	Equipment Failure	Time series observations of a couple intermediate polars. Dome stopped tracking at some point. Restarted ACE and it appeared to close and park at home (237 deg?). "P" is straight North - is that what I should have parked? Tried to close mirror cover and got Mirror Cover: Fault. I hope I didn't break something with this. Are we still not closing the mirror cover? It would be very helpful to those of us that observe somewhat rarely to have a checklist of startup and shutdown sequence. It would be useful if we could have these mailed to sara-tech on submission. Looking at html source it appears this may be possible. Judi if you want to give me login privileges I can have a look. Brian can you (or someone) please check that I got everything shut down correctly. Tracking is off and parked at HA=0 and dec -25 with dome closed.
10/16/2022	Yong Sheng	Dieter Hartmann, Nikita, Dhruv, Madeline	Andor CCD griz	10	1	Humidity	The humidity was very high (96%) at the beginning. But it dropped down quiet quickly. Clemson blazar study and student experiencing observation with SARA RM telescope.
10/10/2022	Priya Gokuldass	None	CCD	6	0	No problems to report	Ultra long GRB host galaxy observation.
10/08/2022	Robert Berrington	none	Arc imager	10	0.5	Equipment Failure	Dome stopped rotating once through out the night. it took about 15-30 mins to 1) figure that out, and 2) to reset the dome. Otherwise, it was a smooth night with clear skies.
10/07/2022	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	8.5	0	No problems to report	Supernovae, blazars, H II regions. Seeing highly variable. Focus 98620. At start of night, CCD computer showed message "closing 2 apps and restarting" then did so. Autoguider works great (after cycling camera power before sunset just to be sure).
10/05/2022	Martha A Leake	none although more were planned	Andor	0	10	Humidity	Humidity from 75 to 96% most of the night; aerosols were 50 microg/m3 to 38 or so all night; did not open. Cirrus clouds (and bright moon) present until early morning hours. No problems in connections or equipment.
10/04/2022	Todd Hillwig	None	Andor CCD	0	10	Clouds	Clouds all night
10/02/2022	Roi Alonso	none	ccd	10	1	Other	WD photometry. QSI camera not responding (T=1000C, dimensions 0x0px), so no autoguiding possible. Dome stucked at typical AZ=315º position, solved with az reset and rotating in the other sense.
09/29/2022	William Keel	2 cats	Andor CCD	11	0	No problems to report	Galaxies, When first connecting, both computers showed black screens; at Brian Brondel's suggestion, rebooted both computers to fix this. Focus 98300.
09/26/2022	Todd Hillwig	None	Andor CCD	0	10	Humidity	Clouds and high humidity all night.
09/25/2022		2 cats	Andor CCD	0	9	Clouds	Galaxies. Weather wipeout.
09/23/2022	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	0	10	Clouds	outer bands of TS Hermine....
09/20/2022	Van Hamme	Samec	CCD	4	5	Humidity	Observing interacting eclipsing binaries. I was able to catch 0.2 d period eclipsing binary last night for nearly a full cycle.
09/18/2022	Ross Silver	Dieter Hartmann	CCD	1	9	Humidity	Calculating photometric redshift of blazars
09/17/2022	Martha Leake	none	Andor	0	9	Humidity	Asteroid photometry. Did not open because of clouds, high wind, high humidity, rain, high aerosols (which decreased). Will download darks, biases later today. Left near morning twilight.
09/15/2022	Javier Licandro	Hissa Medeiros	Andor camera (JKT)	0	8	Wind	Asteroid photometry
09/10/2022	Todd Vaccaro	Morgan Moore, Mel Isenbarger	Andor CCD	9	0	Software/Control PC Issues	EB program. Found the telescope and dome not parked correctly and were pointing NW (Dec +58). Zenith parking kept saying vignetting, reset tele ACE, then full reset, but never changed, though the Mirror cover stopped blinking that it was trying to open and simply said open. Camera not controllable from tele computer, so ran from Cam computer, but it wasn't filling in the headers with observer or object until the end of the night when I typed new information in. AIJ missing and C drive is full (D image drive not a problem) and had trouble getting MaximDL to open images till later on. The Focus routine on tele side would do its thing, but then plot nothing for bright star field or faint, so left as is for focus, but feel it could have been much better as mnt reporting 0.6" or less most the night; I was getting 1.4 down to 1.1". Cam computer also started up with an error saying that it failed to update Windows. I couldn't get the dome cam to work, which would've been nice since at one point I thought the dome/tele weren't lined up (Az were off by 70 degrees and I saw a lot of moonlight for an hour and a dark shadow of something bottom left on images).
09/08/2022	Yong Sheng	Dieter Hartmann, Isaiah Cox	Andor CCD	1	8	Other	I have to stop observing due to my health issue after finishing the calibration frames. But I did notice a tracking issue. The images show strips instead of point sources.
09/01/2022	Javier Licandro	Hissa Medeiros	Andor camera (JKT)	0	8	Clouds	Asteroid photometry
09/04/2022	William Keel	DragonCon Live Astronomy	Andor CCD	3	0	No problems to report	End of night outreach session. Focus 10400. Guider again very reliable.
09/02/2022	Roi Alonso	Lisa Altinier	CCD	6	1	Clouds	WD photometry, closed for about 1h due to clouds. Autoguiding and almost everything working nicely. Mirror covers stay in "closing" status forever.
09/04/2022						Clouds	End of night for outreach event - Crab, NGC 157, NGC 7469... Focus 100500. Guider is more trouble-free and routine than I've ever found it before.
08/26/2022	james Webb	Jonathon Barata	CCD	0	8	Connection Issues	My home computer failed to connect and couldn't log in. My issues, not RM issues.
08/25/2022	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	9	1	Software/Control PC Issues	For the ssecond time in a row, both the camera and telescope computer were unresponsive when I logged in and the dome said 'Doors Ajar' Autofocus failed tried restart, but that did not change anything. Seeing was poor at the beginning of the night, but got better towards morning.
08/21/2022	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	8	2	Clouds	Both the camera and telescope computer were unresponsive when I logged in and the dome said 'Doors Ajar' Plenty of intermittent clouds and poor seeing wtih wind at the threshold most of the night.
08/19/2022	Roi Alonso	none	ccd	0	9	Clouds	High dense clouds and dust increasing. Did not open.
08/18/2022	Javier Licandro	Hissa Medeiros	Andor camera (JKT)	8	0	No problems to report	Asteroid photometry
08/16/2022	Ron Kaitchuck	None	CCD	3	3	Equipment Failure	Exoplanet transits. The dome rotation failed. Peter Mack fixed that but the camera only produced “bias” frames after that. My guess is the dome was not properly synced to the telescope. My targets were then low in the west, so I alerted Peter, closed the dome and went to bed.
08/15/2022	Nuria Torres-Alba	Dieter Hartman	SARA RM	9	0	No problems to report	Clemson University observations of high-z blazars. No problems to report.
08/14/2022	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	0	8	Clouds	M31
08/13/2022	Ron Kaitchuck	none	CCD	6	3	Equipment Failure	Dome stopped turning at 320 deg AZ I was not able to recover, but clouds came in antway.
08/12/2022	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	7	0	Software/Control PC Issues	Asteroid, M31. Autofocuser did not finish routine.
08/11/2022	Tom Rutherford	None	CCD	7	0	Equipment Failure	Asteroid, M31. Autofocuser would not operate.
08/10/2022	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	9	0	No problems to report	H II regions, radio galaxies. Focus in BVR 100300. Mirror cover remains open after close command.
08/09/2022	Yong Sheng	Dieter Hartmann	Andor CCD	10	0	No problems to report	Clemson University Blazar study The observation is pretty smooth.
08/08/2022	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	9	0.5	Software/Control PC Issues	H II regions, radio galaxies. Focus 102300; software lost control of focus early on, cycled power on ACE cabinet at Brian Brondel's suggestion. (This also seems to have fixed the mirror covers not reaching their open limit switches when first opening). Never did get QSI camera to finish a readout to try guiding even after the restart. Note: mirror covers did not close at end of night (no response at all to clicking the CLOSE button).
08/05/2022	Javier Licandro	Hissa Medeiros	Andor camera (JKT)	6	2	Other	Asteroid photometry. The dust was over the limit for couple of hours.
08/04/2022	Roi Alonso	none	Andor CCD	8.5	0.1	Equipment Failure	WDs photometry. Autoguider working, all good. Dome stuck at AZ=315 (coming from higher values). Solved with dome AZ reset, and manually turning the dome in the other direction (steps of 90 degs) until AZ 300, and then linking the dome again. Mirror petals not closing.
08/02/2022	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	8	0	No problems to report	Had to restart several times, MaximDL crashed not sure what happened, maybe the CCD computer needs to be rebooted? Else No issues, good night.
08/01/2022	Stephen Gillam	Jacob Romeo	Andor Camera	8	2	Clouds	rOAp stars. One technical problem occurred. The dome rotation failed when the dome reached an azimuth of 313 degrees. We did an azimuth recycle and homed the dome. Note that the "home" did not work until we had moved the dome a small angle with the "GO" button.
08/01/2022	Stephen Gillam	None	Andor Camera	8	2	Clouds	ROAps. The dome stopped tracking late in the night. The dome azimuth was 314 degrees. An azimuth recycle got it going. Again, I had to move the dome manually before it would home, after the recycle. There is a bug in the RA, Dec offset GUI. When an RA offset is commanded of >60 arc seconds, or perhaps >59", the scope tracking is turned off. "IDLE" is indicated. No errors are reported. The scope can be slewed. But, it will not track when it reaches the target coordinates. This was fixed by closing down the telescope ACE node service, power-cycling the ACE control cabinet, and re-starting the ACE nodes service.
07/31/2022	Stephen Gillam	None	Andor Camera	10	0	Equipment Failure	ROAps. The dome stopped tracking late in the night. It was also not tracking when I started up at 4;15 EDT. In both cases, the dome azimuth was 314 degrees. An azimuth recycle got it going in both cases. Oddly, I had to move the dome manually before it would home, after the recycle.
07/30/2022	Stephen D. Gillam	Leila Alamos, Jacob Romeo	Andor	10	1	Equipment Failure	rOAp stars. Telescope tracked to just over 4 hours west and stopped tracking. Attempts to move the 'scope to the zenith failed with the following error. "Unable to complete slew due to equipment error."
07/29/2022	Stephen Gillam	Leila Alamos, Laina Talman-Bogusta, Jacob Romeo	Andor Camera	10	0	Software/Control PC Issues	Rapidly Oscillating Ap Stars. The Dropbox share service is not available.
07/23/2022	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	6	2	Other	Dust was intermittent above the threshold value. Closed the dome a couple of times during the night.
07/22/2022	Martha Leake	none	Andor	4.5	3	Other	Dusty conditions (over 20 mcg/m3) to start, plus camera computer needed rebooting via APC rack, which was not easy to find; Brian helped. I was able early on to close the mirror covers, then waited for less dusty conditions. Opened dome 22:56 UT, closed it at 3:26 UT. Accidentally using another observer's camera control menu led to long darks that were not mine. Observed Comet and asteroid. Conditions clear, light wind, 0.6-1.5 " seeing; but dust at 23. Closed up; within 15 minutes dust reached 118.8. No problems with dome, mirror covers or pointing.
07/15/2022	Priya Gokuldass	None	CCD	0	9	Equipment Failure	Couldn't observe due to the Dome shutter failure
07/12/2022	Gary Henson	Rutherford	Andor CCD	4	0	No problems to report	Asteroid light curve Dome shutter still under repair but left open by ACE for night observing as weather clear and dry. Telescope and CCD working normally.
07/07/2022	Alex McDaniel	Dieter	Andor CCD	0	9	Equipment Failure	Dome still not functional
07/05/2022	Kurtis Williams	none	Andor	0	8	Other	Dome still not functional
06/25/2022	Ro	Dieter Hartmann	CCD	0	9	Equipment Failure	Could not observe due to the dome shelter failure.
06/23/2022	Yong Sheng	No	RM-griz	0	9	Equipment Failure	A text file on the RM computer says that RM will not be operational until Jun. 01 due to dome shelter failure.
06/07/2022	Roi Alonso	Lisa Altinier	CCD	0	8	Equipment Failure	Message in the "telescope computer" from Peter: THE SWITCHED POWER DISTRIBUTION UNIT (PDU) NEED TO BE POWER CYCLED. UNFORTUNATELY, IT WAS NOT CYCLED LAST NIGHT AND SO THE SYSTEM IS NOT USEABLE.
06/05/2022	Roi Alonso	Lisa Altinier	Andor	8	0	No problems to report	WDs photometry, with autoguiding working smoothly. First night in a long time with 0 issues (not even restarts of the ace connector client!).
06/03/2022	William Keel	2 cats	Andor CCD	9	0	No problems to report	Radio galaxies, dust in galaxies. Focus 97100, guider focus -50. QSI guide camera twice got stuck refusing to take exposures, even after one full restart.
05/31/2022	Kent Montgomery	none	CCD	0	8	Wind	Wind over 70 kph for first two hours of night so we gave up and never opened.
06/01/2022	Ken Watanabe	Nicolas Rimbert	CCD	7	0	No problems to report	Blazars
05/30/2022	Kent Montgomery	none	CCD	0	8	Humidity	Asteroid Photometry, 100% humidity, mountain was in a cloud, never opened
05/29/2022	Martha Leake	none	Andor	2.4	6.1	Humidity	Other issues: Clouds, high winds, Ace-client-gui not working, dome rotation needed homing. Waited for humidity to drop (long wait, and some telescopes never reached less than 100%). JKT was best, but neighboring telescopes' RH spikes usually indicated another wave of high humidity. Waited for high winds to calm. Followed quick restart when ace-gui fault occurred; no reoccurrence. Dome rotation activated when needed. Interesting night and an interesting object (P = 0.132 h) to track.
05/27/2022	james webb	none	CCD	0	10	Connection Issues	Blazar microvariability. My home situation prevented me from observing:(.\
05/26/2022	Alex	Dieter	Andor CCD	8.5	1.5	Software/Control PC Issues	Clemson Blazar Photo-z measurement program. during the night I needed to do a full reset and azimuth recycle. Other than that no major issues.
05/25/2022	Tomomi Otani	Julia Clark, Adrian Moraga	CCD	9.5	0	No problems to report	Hot subdwarf photometry time series. Everything was good tonight.
05/25/2022	Tomomi Otani	Julia Clark, Adrian Moraga	CCD	9.5	1	Software/Control PC Issues	Hot subdwarf photometry time series. ACE client stopped working a few times. The regular procedure worked to fix them.
05/22/2022	Roi Alonso	none	CCD	7.5	0.5	Equipment Failure	WDs photometry. QSI camera not responding to commands. Dome stopped rotating, AZ reset did not work, but a full reset did.
05/22/2022	Ron Kaitchuck	none	CCD	5	0	Software/Control PC Issues	The auto-focus routine was unable to change the focus. Fortunately the telescope was already at an acceptable focus.
05/22/2022	Todd Vaccaro	N/A	Andor CCD	7	.5	Software/Control PC Issues	Eclipsing binaries. Lost time with the crashing of ACE on tele computer just about every hour during sequences. Dome stuck beginning of night that an Az reset, home fixed.
05/21/2022	Todd Vaccaro	N/A	Andor ccd	6	1	Software/Control PC Issues	Eclipsing binaries. ACE crashed on the telescope computer almost every hour, which was rectified by simply closing it and restarting it. The telescope got stuck in the west near airmass 2.3, resetting HA and moving with the hand paddle eventually worked to free it, but lost 20 minutes. Catching the failing ACE during sequences lost me blocks of 5 minutes or so each hour. I noticed on the dome cam that the dome slit has a strip of insulation or something about a foot or two long dangling from near the top, which may fall into the scope. I have an image of it I can share if needed.
05/18/2022	Tomomi Otani	Julia Clark, Adrian Moraga	CCD	8	1	Software/Control PC Issues	Photometry time series of Hot subdwarf stars. The focus stopped working, but it started working again after we did a full restart.
05/17/2022	Tomomi Otani	Adrian Moraga, Julia Clark	Andor	8	1	Software/Control PC Issues	Photometry time series. Dome stopped rotating one time. We followed the procedures on the note on the telescope PC and the issue was fixed.
05/13/2022	Núria Torres-Albà	Dieter Hartmann	SARA RM	7	0	No problems to report	Clemson University observations of high-z blazars No problems to report
05/12/2022	Robert Berrington	none	camera	3	5	Clouds	short period variable stars.
05/10/2022	Roi Alonso	Lisa Altinier	CCD	7	1	Wind	WDs photometry, around 1h closed due to wind. No success with the autoguider, the QSI camera seems unresponsive (reading takes forever, reported temperature at 1000C and reported size 0x0 pixels).
05/09/2022	Roi Alonso	Lisa Altinier	CCD	0	8	Wind	Wind gusts above 45km/h all night, we did not open the dome.
05/07/2022	Roi Alonso	Lisa Altinier	CCD	8	0	No problems to report	WDs photometry with autoguiding. Perfect night. ACE client at telescope PC crashed twice, only needing to close and open the program.
05/06/2022	Yong	Dieter Hartmann	RM griz	10	0	Software/Control PC Issues	On the telescope PC, a window popped up multiple times, saying that ace stopped working. Not a big ideal since reopen the ace client will fix it. Restart is not even needed.
05/04/2022	B Murphy	Day, Grabarz, Pease	Andor	9	0	No problems to report	Globular Cluster photometry
05/03/2022	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	9	0	No problems to report	AGN with emission-line clouds. Focus 97300, guider focus 800. Do not use the "save last image" button while another exposure is in progress - took me a half hour, two connector-client restarts and 2 dome azimuth resets to recover from that bit of genius. (I never did quite recover the setup on the CCD computer) Brian Brondel connected and tweaked the guider to remove E-W oscillations.
05/02/2022	William Keel	3 cats	Andor CCD	9.5	0	No problems to report	Finishing merger sample in Dead Quasar Survey. Unsure whether dome fully opened at start of night after talking to Brian Brondel. Doughnuts of dust and defocussed stars looked OK, as did camera view of dome slit at dawn. Focus 97400. Guider continues much more reliable with auto ROI and 2x2 binning.
04/30/2022	Roi Alonso	Lisa Altinier	CCD	8	0	No problems to report	WDs photometry with autoguider (thanks for the new tips!). Everything running smoothly, except ACE connector client at telescope PC crashing twice.
04/30/2022	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	8.5	0.5	Software/Control PC Issues	Had to do two full restarts during the night plus an azimuth dome recycle.
04/29/2022	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	7	0	No problems to report	Telescope GUI crashed twice, else n issues.
04/27/2022	Roi Alonso	Lisa Altinier	CCD	8	1	Clouds	WDs photometry. Tried to autoguide, with no success: the QSI focus does not move and seems unfocussed, the X-stage is locked between position 1 and 2, can move to 0 and 1, but stays in the middle when trying to go to 2. Usual problems: ACE restarts needed at telescope, and dom AZ resets.
04/27/2022	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	8.5	0.5	Software/Control PC Issues	The camera computer suddenly rebooted without prior warning. When I logged back in a window poppoed up saying the the AVG anti-virus software has been updated. If something needs updating usually one gets a prompt, not this time. Evrything else went smooth.
04/26/2022	Michael Fauerbach	NA	CCD	5	5	Other	Thanks to Saida for offering up the night. I got a late start, else the night was rather uneventful. Focus was unresponsive once and when I tried to restart the node service Windows was unhappy and couldn't stop it. Thanks to ACE the problem was solved quickly.
04/21/2022	Roi Alonso	Lisa Altinier	CCD	1	9	Humidity	WDs. Brian and ACE prepared the telescope for the night (thanks!). No issues, apart from the humidity suddenly (minutes) going from 20% to 90%. Fortunately we noticed it and we closed the dome in time. It remained high the whole night.
04/21/2022	Stephen Gillam	None	ARC Camera	0	12	Equipment Failure	rOAp stars. The dome got stuck at 182 degrees. I homed it and then the dome tracked the telescope azimuth without another hitch. The telescope got "stuck" on the west limit at +3 hours HA. This was odd as I had slewed to the same hour angle just a few mins earlier. I checked the DIO96 bord and found that it was not operating. (The board was not present in the Instacal GUI.) I shut down the Telescope computer from software. Then powered off the Telescope control computer and the ACE control cabinet from the remote APC. A test of the DIO board showed "FAIL" and red lights on all its channels. I repeated the DIO board recycle procedure three times, occasionally recycling the power to the computer and ACE controls, instead of powering off and then on again. All attempts left the DIO board in the failed state.
04/19/2022	Ted von Hippel	none	none	0	0	No problems to report	Offered the telescope to SARA-Board yesterday but no takers.