20170512 Commissioning Plan

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

twilight tests

Standard LRS2 twilight for any science frames that might be taken

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:

Support LRS2 Commissioning team

The highest priority for this night is to support the visiting Austin team

Recommission of the ACAM and shuffle

Purpose: With the remounting of the IHMP and the adjustments on the dither mechanism we need to test setting up on targets again.

Determine the Center of the BIB:

• Select a 13th mag star in a reasonably rich field with shuffle for the BIB
• Setup on the very center of the BIB and save an image.
• Guide on one of the guide probes
• Put in the ACAM and save an shallow image with the target star not saturated.
• Report on the position of the BIB in the night report.
• Save a deeper image which should show more than a dozen stars.

Repeat the above tests a few times at different Az to confirm that the positions are good.

test modified dither script

Purpose: We have a modified version of the dither script to run to see if we can move and keep the WFS centered while doing VIRUS dithered exposures.

Procedure:

• Setup on a IHMP observation using shuffle.
• Get setup for guiding on a guider and observing with WFS1.
• take a dither set with the code /home/mcs/astronomer/sir/hs/mhetdex-dither.py
• Watch carefully as you dither to see if the position of the WFS gets much worse.
• If it does get worse try it again with /home/mcs/astronomer/sir/hs/phetdex-dither.py
• Report clearly to astronomer@mcs which of these two versions works.

Take some parallel observations to test CAMRA software

Purpose: We have a new version of CAMRA which should take care of some of the key words that had failed in the past. Please take a number of these during the night (the dome need not be open).

Procedure:

• Get on a track
• Take a parallel exposure with vlexp

Image quality tests

Purpose: The purpose of this test is to determine if there are any dome seeing constraints of the HET image quality. Thus this test should be done under good stable conditions, typically DIMM < 0.9" and not while the temperature is dropping, ie. the start of the night.

Procedure:

• Make sure conditions are stable and DIMM < 0.95.
• Select a target into the wind in the first half of the track. Use do_shuffle for all probes probably using the --use_brightness true option.
• Setup on the target on the ACAM and guide
• Set imagers with exposures of at least 5 seconds and WFS with exposures at least 15 seconds.
• Make sure metrology and images are being saved for 5 minutes.
• Pull out the ACAM and guide on the BIB with exposures of at least 5 seconds.
• Save images and data for 5 minutes.
• repeat for the full track.

Testing Probe offsets

Purpose: We want to see how accurately we offset using probe offsets with the same tools that we used for the guide probe measurements.

Procedure:

• Setup on For VIRUS on IFU 095 for Globular cluster ngc6205 in the east early in the track.
• Setup on GC1 (You can also run a WFS to keep good IQ).
• Expose VIRUS for 180 seconds syscmd -v -V 'expose( seconds=180, x_binning=2, y_binning=1, type="sci", object="ngc6205_095_E", observation=2, exposure=1 )'
• Wait for the shutter to close syscmd -V 'wait_for_shutter_close(observation=2, exposure=1 )'
• Move to 2nd dither position with a probe offset move mgp -toff=-1.27,0.73
• Expose VIRUS for 180 seconds syscmd -v -V 'expose( seconds=180, x_binning=2, y_binning=1, type="sci", object="ngc6205_095_E", observation=2, exposure=2 )'
• Wait for the shutter to close syscmd -V 'wait_for_shutter_close(observation=2, exposure=1 )'
• Move to 3rd dither position with a probe offset move mgp -toff=0.0,-1.46
• Expose VIRUS for 180 seconds syscmd -v -V 'expose( seconds=180, x_binning=2, y_binning=1, type="sci", object="ngc6205_095_E", observation=2, exposure=3 )'
• Wait for the shutter to close syscmd -V 'wait_for_shutter_close(observation=2, exposure=3 )'
• Move back to the start with a probe offset move mgp -toff=1.27,0.73

• Repeat the test but guiding on GC2 Be sure to change the observation number to 3
• Repeat the test but guiding on GC1 Be sure to change the observation number to 4
• Repeat the test but guiding on GC2 Be sure to change the observation number to 5

Closed dome engineering for bad weather, or while stacking:

Full set of LRS2 and VIRUS cals.

Special cals that need to be done:

• 200 ldls flats
• FeAr? 1800s red x4

See and update ​longcals when done.