wiki:NightOperations/Commissioning/Plans/20160531

20160531 Commissioning Plan

Priorities for test are in the order listed in the plan below.

Twilight

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 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.

PV on a star(s)

Purpose: Test algorithms for separating out the RGB components in the color PV camera. Phillip requests that we observe a blue star near center of track.

Procedure:

  • Select a BSC with type A or bluer before center of track
  • Setup on the star and focus with ACAM on other stars in the field of view
  • Pull out the ACAM and insert the PV.
  • Center on the PV. It is likely very close to the IHMP center
  • Take several PV images

If you have time then also try to get an M type star.

Closed dome engineering tests:

Test EGS setup

See e-mail from Sergey. Steve has setup a number of guide stars using shuffle. It would be good to know if these are realistic.

Procedure:

  • Select some of the EGS stars from the hetdex_list in htopx
  • Send target to TCS
  • Once track has started: run script ~/sir/egs/egs_gs <target name>
  • run egs_gs output
  • record any errors
  • try another EGS target

Example

[astronomer@mcs ~]$ ~/sir/egs/egs_gs CANDELS_West_11 mgp -radec=14.3041,52.908781,gc1,14.2933,52.662861,gc2,14.297,52.845878,wf1,14.3275,52.836006,wf2

If the track is no longer available we could use gstar and just look for these RA and DEC positions and see if they seem reasonable.

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.
Last modified 8 years ago Last modified on Jun 1, 2016 12:31:24 AM