20170409 Commissioning Plan

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

twilight tests

VIRUS special twilights

Purpose: There is some interest in seeing what the long term illumination correction changes look like including what different track positions do to them. The script is "specialtwilight" in /home/mcs/astronomer/bin/. It takes a single argument which is the Observation number.

Procedure:

• Setup the guide camera for sky twilight (GC2, 0.1 sec exposure, B filter)
• When you hit the correct flux level (biased to a slight higher value, perhaps 5k) execute the specialtwilight script

Night time engineering:

Basic offsetting

• Setup on a star a bit before center of track in the north but not at Az 0.
• Start the trajectory
• Try offsetting on the ACAM using normal telescope offsets
• Try offsetting with the BIB using normal telescope offsets
• Try offsetting with the GC using both normal telescope offsets and probe offsets
• Try setting up on the WFS to make sure those normal mgp or lower level probe-offset commands work
• If you get errors or clearly wrong offsets call Jason and report the specific problem.

Basic offsetting using the correction command

• Setup on a star a bit before center of track in the north but not at Az 0.
• Start the trajectory
• Save an ACAM image
• Offset using the mouse clicks and try selecting the "Correction" option.
• The goal is to move the star from the position it starts at to the goal position, e.g. IHMP.
• Take an ACAM image
• Compare the RA and DEC in the headers. These should be identical.

Check fundamental positions

Purpose: The goal is to make sure that the fundamental positions LRS2-B, LRS2-R and BIB have not moved on the ACAM after the PFIP work.

Procedure:

• Setup on a 15th mag star on the LRS2-R on the ACAM.
• Save an ACAM imamge
• Take a LRS2 image and use lmap to determine centering.
• Report positions in the night report.
• Setup on a 15th mag star on the LRS2-B on the ACAM.
• Save an ACAM imamge
• Take a LRS2 image and use lmap to determine centering.
• report positions in the night report.
• Setup on a 15th mag star on the BIB position on the ACAM.
• Guide on the BIB right in the center
• Center the star very carefully in the center of the BIB.
• Switch to guiding on the GC
• Save a BIB image
• Put in the ACAM and save an image with the ACAM
• measure and record the position on the ACAM.
• Check that our current LRS2-B -> LRS2-R offsets yield good centering.

BIB Drag Test

• Make sure your stack is pretty good (RSE < 250)
• Make sure GROC is pretty well set
• Select a 13th mag target near the start of the track for all probes and targetted on BIB using shuffle and shuffle_config_matt4
• When making offsets make sure to use the new corrections box.
• Setup on BIB and start guiding on BIB.
• Center up both guide probes and start metrology loops.
• Center up at least one OWFS to watch focus.
• set bib exposure to be not saturated but at least 3 seconds ( e.g. 2 seconds with 2 co-add)
• Record a time, GROC and RSE in the log
• Hit "store images" and "Start Metrology Loop" for GC1, GC2, WFS1, WFS2, TT, BIB
• In this test we should NEVER apply X,Y, or GROC offset corrections
• Run until the end of track
• when done, record a time, GROC and RSE in the log

Run this at several different Az. Priorities 320, 40, 350, 10, 0, 20, 340, 30, 330.

Center of track pointing zero points

Purpose: we are testing a new pointing model.

Procedure:

• Observe a somewhat bright (~12th mag) star near the center of the track every 10 degrees in Az pointing to the IHMP.
• 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
  

Closed dome engineering for bad weather, or while stacking:

Full set of LRS2 and VIRUS cals.