20160528 Commissioning Plan
Priorities for test are in the order listed in the plan below.
Twilight
Before Sunset at Az 155 (or Az 0) please take PV images at the center of track and at the 4 tracker corners so that you get 160 ADU.
After Sunset at Az 155 (or Az 0) please take twilight LRS2 and VIRUS exposures that have good flux (more than 10,000 ADU) but not saturated on either LRS2b, LRS2r, or VIRUS.
NOTE: Be sure to use type "twi" instead of type "sci"
On sky engineering tests:
Observing GOODS-N in bright time
Purpose: We would like to see the impact of the sky brightness on the observing with VIRUS. Thus moon phase is not important but clouds are. Please do not observe with any kind of significant clouds.
Procedure:
- Get setup from CommissioningTargets? directory
- Setup using those files
- Observe a normal hetdex like observation (6 minutes per dither) with VIRUS
Pointing zero points Version 2
Purpose: We are testing a new pier model structureModel.dat.test2 located at /opt/het/hetdex/etc/configfiles. If you need to revert to the original please copy over structureModel.dat.orig.
Procedure:
- cp /opt/het/hetdex/etc/configfiles/structureModel.dat.test2 /opt/het/hetdex/etc/configfiles/structureModel.dat
- Observe a somewhat bright (~10th mag) star at the center of track (within 20 mm) every 15 degrees in Az pointing to the IHMP. You can skip Az 0 and Az 180.
- Make sure that tip-tilt is running and that you are in focus.
- Save an image with ACAM with a exposure of at least 5 seconds and record the star position (x,y in pixels) in the night log along with the Az, tracker X and tracker Y. See the following example:
Sun May 22 10:58:16 GMT 2016 u'az': 30.228086, u'dec': 57.55186, u'dec_2000': 57.473979, u'el': 55.060253, u'hour_angle': 21.900711, u'itf.phi': -0.31734, u'itf.rho': -0.878, u'itf.t': u'1463914697.570000000', u'itf.theta': -0.446872, u'itf.x': -77.065537, u'itf.y': -102.704068, u'itf.z': -1.383, u'lst': 20.07067, u'offset.focus.w': -2, u'offset.sky.x': 0, u'offset.sky.y': 0, u'offset.tiptilt.p': 0, u'offset.tiptilt.t': 0, u'parallactic_angle': 53.798219, u'ra': 22.16996, u'ra_2000': 22.159929, u'zenith_distance': 34.939747} 20160522T105823.6_acm_sci star 162 314
- when done:
cp /opt/het/hetdex/etc/configfiles/structureModel.dat.orig /opt/het/hetdex/etc/configfiles/structureModel.dat
Pointing zero points Version 1
Purpose: We are testing a new pier model structureModel.dat.test1 located at /opt/het/hetdex/etc/configfiles. If you need to revert to the original please copy over structureModel.dat.orig.
Procedure:
- cp /opt/het/hetdex/etc/configfiles/structureModel.dat.test1 /opt/het/hetdex/etc/configfiles/structureModel.dat
- Observe a somewhat bright (~10th mag) star at the center of track (within 20 mm) every 15 degrees in Az pointing to the IHMP. You can skip Az 0 and Az 180.
- Make sure that tip-tilt is running and that you are in focus.
- Save an image with ACAM with a exposure of at least 5 seconds and record the star position (x,y in pixels) in the night log along with the Az, tracker X and tracker Y. See the following example:
Sun May 22 10:58:16 GMT 2016 u'az': 30.228086, u'dec': 57.55186, u'dec_2000': 57.473979, u'el': 55.060253, u'hour_angle': 21.900711, u'itf.phi': -0.31734, u'itf.rho': -0.878, u'itf.t': u'1463914697.570000000', u'itf.theta': -0.446872, u'itf.x': -77.065537, u'itf.y': -102.704068, u'itf.z': -1.383, u'lst': 20.07067, u'offset.focus.w': -2, u'offset.sky.x': 0, u'offset.sky.y': 0, u'offset.tiptilt.p': 0, u'offset.tiptilt.t': 0, u'parallactic_angle': 53.798219, u'ra': 22.16996, u'ra_2000': 22.159929, u'zenith_distance': 34.939747} 20160522T105823.6_acm_sci star 162 314
- when done:
cp /opt/het/hetdex/etc/configfiles/structureModel.dat.orig /opt/het/hetdex/etc/configfiles/structureModel.dat
Dither Test
Procedure:
- Restack
- Select from the CommissioningTargets? directory either N5272 or NGC5024 which are rich globular cluster with a full trajectory
- Setup guiding on one guide probe but with a 2nd star (not guiding but saving images, ie. with loop open but collecting metrology) in the second guide probe. You may need to run it a 2nd time to get a GC1 guide star.
- Observe the target with VIRUS for a full track taking short dithers of 60 seconds for each position. Each dither set needs to be a separate observation. Save an ACAM image after each set. Save guider data from both guiders for the full trajectory.
ACAM insertion Test
Procedure:
1 Restack
2 Select a fairly rich star field with at least 10 stars which are well exposed but not saturated in a 5 second exposure.
3 Setup guiding on one guide probe but with a 2nd star (not guiding but saving images, ie. with loop open but collecting metrology) in the second guide probe. You may need to run it a 2nd time to get a GC1 guide star.
4 Insert ACAM
5 Take an image
6 retract ACAM
7 repeat 4-6 (which could be scripted over most of a track, at least 30 times).
8 Save guider data from both guiders for the entire test.
Test EGS setup
See e-mail from Steve Finklestein. Unpack that information and see if you can use it to setup on one of the EGS fields. Compare setup to Gstar results.
Closed dome engineering tests:
Flats over time
We'd also like to add getting a larger number of flat exposures to the long-term operations procedures. This is for monitoring small changes in the pixel-to-pixel response for VIRUS over time. The cadence would be about once a week, and after any unit has been pumped and recooled, and we want LDLS 20 flats taking each time for this.
lots of bias datasets for VIRUS - we want to see if there is any correlation between small changes we see in the structure of the bias and CCD temperature or enclosure temperature. Since many of the CCDs are floating in temperature depending on the enclosure temperature, we may be causing very small changes in bias. We'd like to look for this and any other instability that there might be. So if you're closed or have poor conditions, getting say 10 bias sets distributed through the night and recording the CCD, and enclosure temps for each would be a useful dataset.
