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SARA
The Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy
Date | Name | Other Observers | Instrument | Hours Observed | Hours Lost | Reason | Observing Program |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
04/12/2024 | Martha A. Leake | none | Andor | 0 | 12 | Equipment Failure | Did not open, but looks like a good night. Same problems as those reported here previously. |
03/23/2024 | Martha Leake | none | JKT | 0 | 11 | Equipment Failure | The RM dome is still needing parts. I did not open. |
03/17/2024 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 0 | 9 | Equipment Failure | Dome controls were not showing up (their windows were yellow) so could not open. |
03/13/2024 | Terry Oswalt | Ahnika Gee and Kyle Boyer | CCD | 0 | 12 | Equipment Failure | ACE confirmed that dome is still not operational. Awaiting parts for repairs to top end of shutter. |
03/08/2024 | Scott Joffre | Dieter Hartmann, Yong Sheng | CCD | 0 | 8 | Equipment Failure | Have not had gear box fixed yet |
02/07/2024 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 0 | 9 | Humidity | |
02/03/2024 | Martha Leake | possibly majors | CCD Cam | 0 | 9 | Equipment Failure | Was asteroid photometry. I will close my connection at present. Clouds are present as well as high aerosols (14.36 microgr/cubic meter). Just finished Open House at VSU, 8-12. |
01/15/2024 | Scott Joffre | Dieter Hartmann, Yong Sheng | ccd | 0 | 8 | Equipment Failure | Still waiting on gearbox part |
01/11/2024 | Isaiah Cox | Dieter Hartmann | Andor CCD griz | 0 | 11 | Equipment Failure | RM still down. |
01/30/2024 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartmann | Andor griz | 0 | 11 | Equipment Failure | The RM is still down |
01/16/2024 | Ken Rumstay | None | CCD | 0 | 12 | Equipment Failure | Observatory still closed due to dome failure. |
12/15/2023 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartamnn | Andor CCD griz | 0 | 12 | Equipment Failure | RM is still down due to the dome failure. |
12/09/2023 | Martha Leake | none | none | 0 | 12 | Equipment Failure | No notification about repair of dome, so I am filing this report (and not observing). |
10/14/2023 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartmann | Andor CCD griz | 12 | 0 | No problems to report | Clemson Blazar study. Restarted to make DS9 work properly. No other problems to report. |
10/12/2023 | Walter Van Hamme | Samec | ANDOR CCD | 5 | 5 | Clouds | Observations of solar type binaries. ATLASJ002.4330+54.8587. |
10/11/2023 | Walter Van Hamme | Samec | CCD | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | Observations of solar type eclipsing binaries. ATLASJ002.4330+54.8587. |
10/16/2023 | William Keel | AY203 class | Andor CCD | 11 | 0 | No problems to report | AGN-ionized clouds, class projects. Focus 99000, guide focus 40. |
10/11/2023 | Martha A. Leake | Jordan Hewins, Marissa Norlund | Andor Camera | 1 | 9 | Software/Control PC Issues | The above refers to missing information in the version of ACE that I selected for KPNO (no text in dropout, shutter, and azimuth boxes) and log in problems with VSU computers used). .Add to that a competing research project (DEB initiative) during the afternoon, dust persisting at ORM (24 -26.5) and clouds after one at ORM. At KPNO, I was confused by the azimuth reset procedure. |
10/11/2023 | Martha Leake | ASTR 4101 students (not all because of Fall Break) | Andor Camera | 1 | 8.5 | Other | Lost several hours (4) to competing astronomy project. When tonight's observations began, within about one hour, aerosol levels climbed above 20 mgm/m3 (to 24 to 26.5) and later the sky became partly cloudy. In addition, VSU computer problems occurred. . |
10/11/2023 | Martha Leake | Students in ASTR 4101 | Leach Camera | 1 | 9 | Software/Control PC Issues | ACE program lacking information in Dropout, Shutter, and Azimuth boxes. No information about completion of action. |
10/09/2023 | Maddy Buisch | Hodari James | Andor | 6 | 0 | No problems to report | RM- Observed comets 2022 A2 and 158P. |
10/08/2023 | Ken Rumstay | None | Andor CCD camera | 0 | 10 | Clouds | Cloud cover all night. I caught a few glimpses of Jupiter, and of the rising Moon after midnight (Eastern time) before giving up, but did not open the dome. When setting up, I noted the following:
The telescope appears to properly slew to objects when “J2000” is selected on the “Slew Telescope” window. However, when the setting is “HA/Dec” is used any attempt to slew the telescope results in the message “Commanded position exceeds HA/Az negative limit”*. I’ve tried going through the full power recycling procedure three times with the same result.
I left the telescope stowed at HA = 0h00m and Dec. = -20 degrees, assuming the telescope position window is correct. I think it is; before it became too dark to see the telescope in the webcam image it appeared to be in the correct position.
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10/05/2023 | Hodari James | Nia Suitt & Oralyn Murchison | Andor | 7 | 2 | Equipment Failure | RM- Training and observations of stars in M13 and Sh2-284 nebula. Andor Camera was offline at the begining of the night and had to be restarted. |
10/04/2023 | Hodari James | Maddy Buisch, Amy Lovell | Andor | 7 | 1 | Software/Control PC Issues | RM- Training and monitoring of comets. Dome issues and tracking issues early in the night. Both resolved by soft reset. |
10/06/2023 | Zach Savery | Millie Dill, Jarrod Bieber, Kaylee Grace | Andor | 9 hours | 0 | Other | Observed pulsating white dwarf G29-38. Potential issue with Dome finding home position, park works fine. Had trouble with ds9 showing current image while observing, fixed itself after restarting ds9 several times. |
10/02/2023 | Zach Savery | Kaylee Grace, Millie Dill, Paula Galvez Molina, Henry Sanford-Crane, Judi Provencal | Andor | 7.5 | 2 | Clouds | Observed pulsating DA white dwarf G29-38. Clouds rolled in around 2:30 am RM time. |
10/01/2023 | Zach Savery | Kaylee Grace, Millie Dill, Tali Natan, Henry Sanford-Crane, Jarrod Bieber | Andor | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Observed pulsating DA white dwarf G29-38. |
09/30/2023 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | M31, NGC 1245. No problems. |
09/26/2023 | Eric Perlman | Methods & Instrumentation Class | Imager/Andor | 6 | 2 | Other | Various objects, connection problems at the beginning (resolved quickly), clouds began to move in during the last hour of the night |
09/27/2023 | Martha Leake | 9+1 student in Obs. Techniques class | Andor Camera | 10.5 | 2 | Equipment Failure | First time at telescope for many students. Biggest issue was the telescope limit problem (also see 9/18 RM report) and being unable to recover. Telescope approached the pole (not zenith) with HA 7h; needed expert help. Many objects briefly observed and items discussed. My thanks to all who offered advice.. Weather was great. Thanks to Brian Blondel, and other observers. |
09/23/2022 | Terry Oswalt | K. Boyer, K. Confeiteiro, A. Gee, A. Lydick, A. Moreira, M. Newell | ARC CCD | 9.5 | 1.5 | Humidity | Gyrochronology program. Fairly good night, except for high humidity, mostly around 75-80%. Closed for 1.5 hours when it exceeded 85% |
09/25/2023 | Scott Joffre | Dieter, Yong | CCD | 4.5 | 4 | Wind | Wind speed at 40 km/hr for the first half of the night. Died down to 25-30km/hr for the rest of the night |
09/07/2023 | Xianming Han | none | ccd | 9.3 | 0 | No problems to report | M57, eclipsing binary |
09/06/2023 | Xianming Han | none | ccd | 8.5 | 0 | No problems to report | eclipsing binary |
09/21/2023 | William Keel | 2 cats | Andor CCD | 11 | 0 | No problems to report | AGN-ionized clods. Focus 99900, guider focus -40 to 70 depending on filter and time of night. Guider working. |
09/18/2023 | Erin Abraham | Priya Gokul Dass | CCD | 2 | 8 | Software/Control PC Issues | Issue with dome tracking - getting error "Slew could not be completed due to telescope limits". We did a full reset several times but it would not fix.
Eclipsing binary observation |
09/15/2023 | Robert Berrington | A486/586 Observing class | arc | 0.5 | 7.5 | Humidity | initial setup was troubled by a dome light left on from prior user. Not long after opening the humidity went above 80% and did not drop for the rest of the evening. |
09/12/2023 | Kurtis Williams | none | Andor | 2 | 9 | Humidity | White dwarf time series photometry. Humidity kept spiking; after hitting closure for the third time gave up for night. |
09/09/2023 | Matt Wood | NA | CCD | 10 | 1 | Other | Time series of cataclysmic variables. 30s exposures.
Dome was OPEN when I first connected!
Dome stuck a couple times during normal tracking. Did the power cycle thing and it eventually worked.
My final object of the night is +51 dec. I usually follow to airmas 2.0 for time series, but the system hit a soft limit before this, and I was not able to back the telescope out, so ACE will need to take care of that before the next observer.
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09/08/2023 | Isaiah Cox | Yong Sheng, Kouser Imam, Dieter Hartmann | CCD | 6 | 1 | Software/Control PC Issues | Had some trouble with dome tracking. Did the azimuth recycle but connecter client would crash whenever I tried to send the dome home. A quick restart fixed this. Tried azimuth recycle and home again and everything worked after that. |
09/05/2023 | Scott Joffre | Yong Sheng, Antonio, Dieter Hartmann | CCD | 4 | 1.5 | Software/Control PC Issues | {{filter}} command when saving file names with the Andor camera kept giving "unknown filter". Additionally, the headers for the fits files gave RA, DEC, and filter as "unknown"
Had a glitch where clicking the home button would shut down the entire program. An entire restart fixed this.
Additionally, some of the observations appeared as if we were just looking at a bias. We diagnosed this as not having calibrated the dome by having it go home first. |
09/03/2023 | William C Keel | DragonCon Love Astronomy | Andor CCD | 5 | 0 | No problems to report | Outreach. Focus 98370. Guider still not moving telescope and showing x,y offsets of order 10^(-306). |
09/02/2023 | William C Keel | DragonCon Space Track | Andor CCD | 4 | 2 | Clouds | Outreach events. Guider was weird - showed x,y offsets of order 10^-305 and was not obviously moving the telescope. Focus 99656, guider focus 40. |
08/27/2023 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 6 | 0 | No problems to report | Exoplanet, M31. All went well. |
08/26/2023 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Exoplanet, M31. No issues. |
08/25/2023 | Stephen Gillam | Kaelyn Weddle, Avery Reynolds, Jessica Nicholson | Andor Camera | 8 | 8 | Humidity | Microvariables
ACE node service failed around 11:30 PM local time, we followed the full procedure to fix it and it is now working. |
08/21/2023 | William Keel | 2 cats | Andor CCD | 9 | 1 | Other | AGN emission clouds. Telescope jumped by 30" near end of one 60m exposure (about 4h W +40), too fast for guider to follow. Focus 10900, guider focus +40. |
08/19/2023 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD | 10 | 0.25 | Software/Control PC Issues | Ionized clouds around AGN. Focus 100230, guider focus 40. During evening twilight flats, camera PC got into a mode where it would not register numbers from the keyboard, even after cycling NUM LOCK multiple times. In desperation I connected from a Mac with VNC and pasted numbers from another field into the filename sequence field. This magically cured the issue. I am puzzled. |
08/18/2023 | TODD R VACCARO | N/A | Andor | 8 | 0 | Other | Eclipsing binary; Dome needed to be linked, unlinked, homed, linked to get tele looking through slit, which stalled flats and had to get more in the morning. The tele pc kept popping up a notification that an anonymous user had connected and then would say left, periodically occurred all night. The vpn banner constantly said to update for improved security and the anti virus program popped up on both machines saying there were 4 potential issues and that it needed updating. Connecting to OneDrive from Chrome or Edge refused to let me upload things to my directory (there was no upload button to be found), so I used my Dropbox. Initial slewing to a target required several attempts before it would land. But once it got going it tracked all night with no issues. |
08/16/2023 | Robert Berrington | none | arc | 7 | 1 | Other | The telescope lost tracking at +2 and +3 HA, and I was unsuccessful in getting the autofocuser to function correctly. I have used the auto focuser successfully numerous times in the past but this time, no matter the star field, and the exp time only returned that the focus routine failed with a click to restart. Fortunately I was able to watch the images go through focus, and I was able to find focus manually. |
08/15/2023 | Xianming Han | none | ccd | 6.5 | 1 | Equipment Failure | eclipsing binary. Telescope stops moving and cannot slew after that. |
08/14/2023 | Kaylee Grace | Zach Savery, Henry Sanford-Crane, Jarrod Bieber, Millie Dill, Judi Provencal | Andor | 0 | 8 | Other | Dusty! In addition, at one point we accidentally took an exposure with QSI and the image wouldn’t process nor could we abort. It became stuck with the progress bar at 100% but it seemed the camera wasn’t actually connected. |
08/12/2023 | Matt Wood | None | CCD | 0 | 8 | Other | Dust 33 and cloudy so didn't open. |
08/13/2023 | Ken Rumstay | None | Andor CCD camera | 0 | 10 | Other | AGN photometry.
Did not open because of high aerosol content (24-35 micrograms per cubic meter). There appears to be some confusion as to what concentration should be cause for ceasing observation. Since the sky was not photometric (scattered clouds throughout the night) I decided not to risk opening the dome. |
08/03/2023 | Walter Van Hamme | Samec | Andor ccd | 9 | 0 | No problems to report | Observations of short period algols. |
07/31/2023 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 0 | 6 | Clouds | Clouds all night-- did not open. |
07/30/2023 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 6 | 0 | No problems to report | Exoplanet, M31. |
07/29/2023 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 6 | 0 | No problems to report | Exoplanet, M31. |
07/28/2023 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 6 | 0 | No problems to report | Exoplanet, M31 |
07/25/2023 | Terry Oswalt | Steve Gillam, Eden Kope, Melinda Walls, Ryan Reynolds, Krys Confeiteirto | Andor Camera | 7 | 3 | Equipment Failure | Gyrochronology and roAp. At the beginning of the observation, the dome would not move past the home position, but would move elsewhere, and we had to do the azimuth restart several times. Towards the end, as we were doing a time series for a roAp target, the telescope stopped working/moving (preload would not turn on, oil pump did turn on) as we reached 1.86 airmass - we tried the quick restart and it did not help. We then tried the full restart and could not complete it due to connection issues. Peter Mack then took over trying to fix the telescope. |
07/21/2023 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartmann | Andor CCD griz | 8 | 0 | No problems to report | Blazar study |
07/21/2023 | Scott Joffre | Dieter, Yong | CCD | 4 | 1 | Wind | Gusts at 40km/hr. Issue with Dome vignetting, corrected with reset. |
07/19/2023 | William Keel | 2 cats | Andor CCD | 8.7 | 0 | No problems to report | Extended [O III] clouds around AGN hosts. Opened cautiously on local advice after wildfire. Focus 101500, guider focus 960. Had to do AZ recycle for dome once. |
07/15/2023 | Stephen Gillam | Stephen Barnier, Avery Reynolds and Aakash Thiyagarajan. | CCD Camera | 0 | 12 | Other | Micro variables. Did not open due to forest fire that started west of the observatory. |
07/11/2023 | Isaiah Cox | Kouser Imam, Dieter Hartmann | Andor CCD | 7 | 0 | No problems to report | Blazars |
07/09/2023 | William Keel | 3 cats | Andor CCD | 8 | 0.5 | Software/Control PC Issues | Ionized AGN clouds. Focus 100400, guide focus 1000. Lost contact between camera PC and focus/filter wheel/QSI camera, so did restart with ACE cabinet power cycle. Later, had to do dome AZ reset once. Connector client on camera PC crashed about 10 times while working on guider and not finding guide stars; thereafter it worked well. |
07/07/2023 | Aakash Rathinam Thiyagarajan | Dr. Gillam | CCD | 7 | 3 | Equipment Failure | Telescope tracking failed frequently, the ACE connector Client had to be restarted to resume the observation run. The dome unlinked at azimuth=29, homing and relinking the dome to the telescope solved the problem. |
07/03/2023 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 0 | 8 | Clouds | Camera seems to be repaired, but clouds all night so no data. |
07/02/2023 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 0 | 8 | Equipment Failure | No CCD controls available when logged in-- I tried recycling everything, which had not effect. Next, I tried rebooting the computers but still nothing. |
06/25/2023 | William Keel | 2 cats | Andor CCD | 2 | 7 | Software/Control PC Issues | Emission in AGN hosts (actually made it just far enough to check on M101 SN). Focus 100400. Guider QSI camera was not talking to Connector Client. Previous restart including cycling both camera and ACE cabinet power and dual PC reboots did not fix the problem, even after multiple times. In fact it's worse - the connector client doesn't even see the Andor CCD, with no camera options existing on the connector client. This exceeds my expertise. |
06/21/2023 | Isaiah Cox | Dieter Hartmann | Andor CCD | 7 | 0 | No problems to report | Blazars |
06/19/2023 | Scott Joffre | Dieter Hartmann | CCD | 4 | 3 | Humidity | Near 90% humidity for the first 3 hours. fell drastically and could observe later |
06/17/2023 | Ken Rumstay | None | Andor CCD Camera | 10 | 0 | No problems to report | AGN observations, Supernova in M101. The dome stopped tracking early in the night; cycling the dome azimuth remedied that. The telescope systematically points slightly (1-2 arcminutes) east of target after slewing. |
06/12/2023 | William Keel | 2 cats | Andor CCD | 8 | 1 | Software/Control PC Issues | AGN host galaxies, M101 SN. Focus 99000, guider focus 0. Two issues: First, guider QSI CCD was not communicating with control software until after cycling camera power on PDU (and waiting for Andor CCD to cool back down) plus rebooting both computers. Also, images were strange in some parts of the sky and at some times, worst case making ENE-WSW lines 10 pixels long. A set of exposures stepping along the meridian every 15 degrees showed some poor location and some good ones, without a monotonic trend. The seeing was excellent (autofocus gave 0.8") so some of this mght not be obvious in more usual conditions. |
06/10/2023 | Roi Alonso | none | ccd | 0 | 7 | Humidity | Humidity high all night. |
06/09/2023 | Isaiah Cox | Dieter Hartmann | Andor CCD | 7 | 0 | No problems to report | Blazars |
06/06/2023 | Yong Sheng | Dieter Hartmann, Kouser Imam | Andor CCD griz | 0 | 8 | Wind | The wind gust was around 40km/h through the whole night, so I didn't have the chance to open the telescope. |
06/04/2023 | Tom Rutherford | None | CCD | 0 | 7 | Clouds | Clouds and humidity-- never opened. |
06/04/2023 | Kaylee Grace | Henry Sanford-Crane | Andor | 0 | 9 | Humidity | Humid all night. |
06/03/2023 | Kaylee Grace | Henry Sanford-Crane | Andor | 0 | 9 | Humidity | Humid all night |
06/03/2023 | Kaylee Grace | Tali Natan, Zach Savery, Millie Dill, Judi Provencal | Andor | 8 | 0.3 | Equipment Failure | Observed GD358. Lost a bit of time at the beginning and middle of the night when the dome would not track. FIxed the issue by cycling the azimuth control. . |
06/02/2023 | Kaylee Grace | Judi Provencal, Millie, Dill, | Andor | 8 | 0.5 | Equipment Failure | Observed pulsating white dwarf GD358. The dome would not track at the beginning of the night. This was fixed by parking the dome. The dome stopped tracking again near the end of the night. Recycled the azimuth control and parked the dome again. |
05/31/2023 | Judi Provencal | Kaylee Grace, Zach Savery, Henry Sanford-Crane | Andor | 0 | 8 | Humidity | Humidity was high the entire night. |
05/29/2023 | Isaiah Cox | Dieter Hartmann | Andor CCD | 6 | 1 | Humidity | Humidity was too high at the beginning and end of the night. |
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.
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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.
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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. |
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