wiki:NightOperations/NewProjects

New project ideas

This is a long laundry list of potential project ideas. Please discuss these with the science operations manager before you invest significant time into any of them -- some may have changed or there may be more important priorities to consider.

Note: an effort has been made to prioritize, but it's still a matter of judgement.

Relatively low effort, relatively low impact

  • TCS/GUI/software projects:
    • unify all of our sound effects - create TCS event that has a sound file and then make the TCS GUI listen to those events and play those sounds
    • make list of TO/RA launcher items to remove/updated; share with other TOs/RAs first then send to Chris
    • vjpg: add color-coded outlines for VHC messages, like on the HTML version of VHC
  • Queue/science projects:
  • Image Quality projects:
    • analyze post-observing measurements to see if they agree w/ WFS-GC gap in IQ - can we account for the IQ difference?
    • check if guider residuals are correlated with probe positions (e.g., carriage encoder positions); check if they correlate with anything else
    • look at stored HPFACQ images, estimate focus? accuracy?
  • Operations projects:
    • add GPS antenna to DIMM2 celestron while on upper hex anyway? ask celestron? (DIMM2 no longer regularly used, may not be worth doing)
    • add HPF pedestal level check to daily OPS tasks (SR can add a button)
    • re-do dark-dome/light-leak test with longer LRS2 exposures, and bay lights; did 5min before, but try maybe 20min?

Relatively high effort, relatively high impact

  • TCS/PAS projects:
    • Improve PAS guider photometry:
      • allow drawing circular/polygon regions instead of squares
      • allow sky box drawing
      • calculate sky surface brightness independent of the stellar profile fit.
    • add ACQ camera overscan correction to PAS? or flat field? improve real-time processing!
    • enable subframe readout on HPFACAM camera to speed up HPF setups
  • Queue/science projects:
    • after HX is finished, make LST-based over-subscription tool for TACs/users
      • assume all targets are at center of track, for planning purposes.
      • estimate pressure and available times of a list of targets / exposures
      • Integrate with TSL/Hydra
    • combine TSL parser with visibility calculator tool; add links in hydra, TSL upload to visibility tool
    • match sky brightness on LRS2 exp calc to real guider measurements
    • work with Greg Z on (LRS2) telluric standards
    • prepare "observation report" for PI for each successful target observed at night
      • single (or multiple) page PDF with sky conditions, guider photometry, WFS details, ACQ setup image, temperature/humidity/etc and other data associated with their observation. Provide on Hydra in real-time.
  • Image Quality projects:
    • correlate seeing data w/ gross weather patterns. PCA?
  • Operations projects:
    • consider the limitation of 10s "cycle time" requirement when guiding on HPFACQ, waiting to be sure the move goes through? unfortunately slow!! Could we do 6s instead?
    • analyze DIAFI data from 2.7m on 2022-03-08/09/10 UT (SO working on ACQ data) (can get guider data too) to quantify effect of scattered moonlight in the dome.
      • what does the pupil see at the edge of a track? anything reflective in the area beyond the mirrors?? PV camera could tell, I think.
    • check guider statistics - amplitude of corrections, exposure times, S/N, etc; track these on a nightly/per-target basis in the NR, eventually
    • include HPF software to run on workstations whenever possible

Relatively high effort, relatively low impact

  • Consider adding PID loops to WFS corrections - sometimes focus "runs away" and can't keep up
  • make regular WFS flats with same method as GC, monitor for degradation
  • get remote control of dome lights, make cal scripts turn on dome lights at end?
  • show/monitor guider PSFs throughout the night, consider this when focusing and deciding when to stack
  • make model of physical degradation of M1 based on integrated weather conditions
    • how much does humidity+dust actually reduce reflectivity?
    • model or measure it with real data
    • simulate a whole year with a given closure condition, what is the expected loss of throughput? compare with time spent closed...
  • subframe readout on ACQ camera (may improve setup times mildly)
  • get data on dome conditioning. what is effect of poor conditioning on night hours and re-stacks? some weather scatter. drop extreme conditions
  • add units to TCS/SAMS GUIs for GROC/piston, etc!
  • ask for units to be added in all GUIs next to any numbers
  • fix VHC so that it does not rely on outside internet
  • work-downwind, quantify effects on IQ, verify safety with mech team? then develop formula for wind speed and Az range, auto-calculate (OTT is doing some of this)
  • include countdown/progress bars on all PAS cameras for exposure times?
  • include radial profile graphs for all metrology loops (GC/ACQ/HPFACQ?)

Administrative projects to consider

  • consider tool for RAs/TOs to provide activity reports at the end of their long OPS shifts or during poor weather, for update on projects
  • discuss alternative metrics for setup times in evals
    • right now, are "overhead" and include RA and TO contribs.
    • if could be just the setup part, would be purely TO (if Niv's stuff works)
  • think about nossy backups/installations; how much could be run on our workstations? stored in repos?

Other projects to consider

  • Ask Steve O if he has seasonal/historic data on sky transparency from 30-inch observations
  • Work with Greg Z to run LRS2raw reductions in real-time while observing
  • Refine our pointing model/layers to do a better job for Az=0 and Az=180 - those have the largest scatter in our pointing corrections
  • Update statistics on sky surface brightness, transparency, and IQ from typical observations at each priority, and provide that documentation to users
  • use Goldilocks to determine how much sky brightness is "too bright", consider making sky-subtracted S/N measurement in our real-time data reduction
  • revisit discussion of "throughput drop" from April 2023, investigate causes and possible explanations
  • monitor total azimuth rotation throughout a whole year - calculate statistics on a nightly or RA-ly basis to see if anybody has a good strategy for managing Az moves
  • quantify FWHM/IQ between both guiders and WFS PSFs to see what is most reliable
  • prepare documentation/planning tools to start using Collecting Efficiency
  • update shuffle to check for proper motion of blind offset starts (has led to bad setups in the past)
  • write small DIMM data monitoring program, and send audio/visual alert if we go >5min without DIMM data while still getting Guider/etc data
  • make cronjob status-checker for VIRUS/LRS2 pivot and other data transfer scripts, just to make sure it doesn't die during the night and end up crashing the instrument servers
  • make monthly probe health check images with cleaned data, to show when flat fields are not working very well
  • discontinue/remove "rasession" on hpf, if it causes more trouble than it is worth?
  • add moon/sky brightness to object observability tool, give brightness at start/mid/end of each track.
  • use ACQ camera photometry to measure photometric zeropoints over many years (requires ACQ data to be processed first - talk to Steve O about his pipeline for doing that)
  • consider documenting our practice of avoiding observations within 15-deg of the moon, inform PIs about the same, and include this in the planning tools
  • consider expanding definition of science time to be 12-deg twilights instead of 18-deg as it is now - with HPF (and soon HRS-2) it is possible to observe to -6 or -8 deg twilight.
  • consider "charging" the -000 engineering program for spectrophotometric standards and telluric standards - right now those are not charged to any partner and are not being consistently handled in our time accounting system
  • once we are using CE, scan the queue submissions to make sure no targets are requesting impossible/unreasonable CE values given their declinations and exposure times.
  • someday expand "checkcals" and "plotcals" from only LRS2 to include VIRUS and HPF cals as well
  • do dark dome testing with GTAG lights on and off some time while closed for weather
  • add another raspberry PI screen for currently loaded shuffle finding chart
  • add another raspberry PI screen to show "rasession" on HPF
  • consider whether this sky model would be useful for us: ​https://rtn-012.lsst.io/
  • consider adding email confirmation when new users create accounts on hydra - would require legit emails and prevent spam user accounts
  • transition stability_test to Python3 (requires fixing weird issues with errors in the matching code that I didn't write)
  • consider adding morning Hg+Cd VIRUS cals into an overall morning cal script that will also run HPF morning cals (and any other morning cals needed) in an efficient way
  • resolve systematic discrepancy between IQ estimates from WFS1 and WFS2
  • Someday, include reports from: ​https://trac.het.astronomy.utexas.edu:8001/trac/WFUCommissioning/wiki/HetDescription/spie and ​https://www.het.astronomy.utexas.edu/HET/TechReports/techreports.htm intp our document management system: ​https://edocuments.utexas.edu/D2/#d2
  • ask Sergey about adding "-ev" argument for L/V cals, to just run a bunch of things together, V, L, PB, PD. since we do that usually
  • ask Sergey about adding self-timing feature to "cal" so that it can report how long each calibration set takes; get those numbers and monitor/report/udpate as needed
  • monitor and update GC1/GC2 positional zeropoints based on Amy W's data
  • analyze GC2 alignment data from 2022-07-30 UT, see RAlog txt file for details; we moved GC2 across its range, with rich star field throughout. plate-solve and check alignment. it's a very cool dataset!!!
  • automatically cycle the filter on the inactive guider every ~5min? useful data for sky brightness modeling
  • consider loading trajectory before cancelling - could speed up the setup commands from target_setup if we run it a little earlier
  • analyze 2021-11-15 UT data: we intentionally moved a mirror segment out and took a VIRUS SPC observation, trying with multiple segments, using PV camera to verify segment is un-obscured. This would allow a direct measurement of that segment's absolute reflectivity
  • periodically review HPF evening/morning cals to assess whether anything can be removed or shortened based on what we know now
  • do another review of HET Queue Operations to publish perhaps in SPIE's JATIS? Similar to this one: ​https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007PASP..119..556S/abstract possibly starting from July 2016 when full science operations began. Maybe target July 2026 for 10-year review?
  • add longcals to highpri, to help remind us when longcals are needed?
  • update hetsky page, migrate off that computer, improve maps/links/etc
  • periodically verify probe positions using VIRUS + ACQ + Guider1 + Guider2 data in rich field - plate solve everything and map it all together
  • data mine historical weather data, how does the temp change before sunset, seasonally/weather; use that to inform operational decisions
Last modified 4 months ago Last modified on Dec 30, 2023 8:37:20 AM