20180315

Twilights

HPF, LRS2 and VIRUS twilights should be taken at the center of track position. Please take them back to back as quickly as possible.

Priorities

• Any P0 or P1 19-1 science or engineering targets [Note that some of the high priority science targets in htopx belong to the engineering tests below]
• Other High priority on sky engineering tests
• Any P2-P4 19-1 science or engineering targets
• Any 19-2 targets

High Priority Engineering Targets in htopx

Note: The order listed is the order of priority.

ENG19-1-004: Contemporaneous LRS2-B and VIRUS SPC observations of faint stars

LRS2 is well-calibrated but VIRUS sometimes shows wavelength-dependent slopes/gradients -- the goal is to cross-calibrate VIRUS with LRS2-B.

This program requires most clear conditions.

We want to observe a SPC (~19th mag) on LRS2-B and 1 VIRUS IFUs/amp. This can be done in grey time immediately before/after HETDEX observations.

The goal is to get at least one of these each clear night.

You can find the trajectory offsets on mcs in /home/mcs/astronomer/VLSPC_jumps/

Some of these .txt files while have notes that no guide star could be found to make the jump in which case you will just run the two different setups as separate trajectories.

ENG19-1-004: Contemporaneous LRS2-B and VIRUS SPC observations of bright stars

LRS2 is well-calibrated but VIRUS sometimes shows wavelength-dependent slopes/gradients -- the goal is to cross-calibrate VIRUS with LRS2-B.

We want to observe a SPC (~15th mag) on LRS2-B and 2-4 VIRUS IFUs/amps. This can be done in grey time immediately before/after HETDEX observations.

There are 6 stars from our SPC catalog which are suitable for both VIRUS and LRS2, and those have been submitted as p1 ENG targets.

For each star, there are two sequences:

*"A" sequence (going from LRS2-B, to 046RL, to 046LL)

*"B" sequence (going from LRS2-B, to 047RL, to 047LL)

For example, the SPC star SA_95-42 has an "A" sequence with object names: VLSPC_SA9542A_B, VLSPC_SA9542A_046RL, and VLSPC_SA9542A_046LL.

The necessary offset commands for each setup are given on the following page, when possible: NightOperations/SciencePlans/20190201

Some targets do not have suitable stars for all three positions. In those cases, do the setup on LRS2-B separately from the setup on the LL/RL amplifiers.

*

The plan:

• Observe one "A" sequence and one "B" sequence per night (these can count as nightly VIRUS SPC as well).

• Once one of each is obtained, do not observe additional standards that night, although you can observe the faintVL engineering targets.

• Try to observe them as close in time to HETDEX as possible (i.e., before or after; do not use dark time!).

• You will need to run "target_setup <id> <az> -to" of the first target in each group to send the fake ACAM image to the TO for setup.

Other High Priority On sky Engineering

Integral Term test during dithered observations

The idea is to test the updated guiding parameters during a VIRUS dither. This test should take less than 15 minutes.

For this test, try an integral term of 0.2 and principle term of 0.8

Previous testing around Az=240 has revealed large deviations in the past; we want to test Az=240 as well as a few other azimuths.

Procedure:

• Select a somewhat rich field to setup on at Az 240 starting at least 25 minute before the center of track.
• Setup on the field. Note we must have 2 guide stars and at least 1 wfs star.
• exposure times on the guiders needs to be >5 seconds.
• set the guiding loop parameters to principle 0.8 and integral 0.2 with: syscmd -T 'Guider2_tune(kd=0,ki=0.2,kp=0.8)' and syscmd -T 'Guider1_tune(kd=0,ki=0.2,kp=0.8)'
• save ACAM, guider1, guider2, wfs star images for the next 5 minutes.
• Note the time when things are stable and collect ~5 minutes of data.
• Start a VIRUS dither exposure sequence (exposures should be 3-4 min at each position)
• report this data has been taken in the RA log with the start and end times and send e-mail to Jason as well.
• save ACAM, guider1, guider2, wfs star images for the next 5 minutes.

Then repeat this test at 3-4 additional azimuths, as possible

When your done with the test return the guide loops to their default values e.g. syscmd -T 'Guider1_tune(kd=0,ki=0.0,kp=1.0)' and syscmd -T 'Guider2_tune(kd=0,ki=0.0,kp=1.0)'

CWFS-CCAS test

Purpose: To sample the CCAS and telescope IQ at the same time under a series of conditions (wind, seeing, temperature etc..). For the moment, I would think that 1.5 arcsec FWHM at the guider field would divide the good seeing from the bad seeing. Somewhat specific condition I am interested in is a high-wind condition. From the last test, we noticed a correlation between high-wind and image quality (more specifically only small increase in the contribution from an effect suspected from the area between CCAS and M1 while significant increase in the contribution from an effect suspected from somewhere above the telescope). But this was only one short track (15min).

Frequency: Please take this test as often as different conditions present themselves during this bright run.

Here is the new procedure in all its gory detail:

TO:
1) Make sure that CWFS is powered up (you may need to restart PAS).
2) Make sure you have a fresh stack.
RA:
3) Select a star of about 11th magnitude and run shuffle for IHMP (000) with the --az flag set to the current azimuth (at the CCAS tower).
TO:
4) Setup on the IHMP position from wiki. Be sure to edit the load_trajectory to include the az=68.593 attribute.
5) Center up your guiders
6) Do a handshake from ACQ to a guider
7) remove the ACQ
8) Insert the CWFS syscmd -P 'DeployCWFSCameraMirror()'
RA:
9) offset from IHMP to CWFS with syscmd -T 'offset_trajectory(dx_ang=-5.1, dy_ang=-3.9, adjust_probes="true")'
10) Look at CWFS x and y offsets and refine the offset above with any residuals until offsets less than 0.3"
11) Set the CWFS exposure time to at least 15 seconds (this can be done by TO).
12) Center up the WFS1 and WFS2
13) Close loop on WFS1 or WFS2
TO:
14) Center up the AOA so that the het spots are lined up with the reference spots. You may have to search with MARS for the HEFI spot first.
15) Close the AOA reference and close the black image on AOA.
16) Switch to HEFI view and set exposure time to 1/125 or 1/60 and power on low and focus the spot perhaps using focus curve
17) Start saving images with all guiders/WFS/CWFS
18) Note the UT time for this set in the RAlog
19) Save 30 images on HEFI using a sequence with the name trackXX_YY where XX is the track number (start with 01 and incriment if you do this more than once in the night) and YY is the sequence number and starting sequence with 1.
20) Switch back to AOA view by removing HEFI
21) Save AOA images using "Hanshin 30"

After 3 minutes repeat steps 14-21 except the HEFI sequence number does not get set to 1. Continuing repeating until you have done this test 5-7 times to fill the central ~50% of the track.

The HEFI images will be in the nightly working directory /data1/mcs/guider/YYYYMMDD and the AOA images will be in the mars directory/home/mars/guider/wave/ . Note there is a cron job which moves the files from the mars directory to the mcs nwd at the end of the night at 14 UT.

When done Retract the CWFS Mirror syscmd -P 'RetractCWFSCameraMirror()' be sure to confirm it is out by watching the CWFS or BIB. Power them down to resume science.

Testing the Guider orientation

Purpose: We would like to nail down the Guider orientation angles before the FPA. This is not critical but this is a test we will be doing after so having a baseline would be helpful. The goal is to have 2 or more stars (even if faint) in a guider. It is ok if the guider only one guider gets this per track. The goal is to get at least 10 different images on sky with 2+ stars.

Procedure:

• Go to a very rich field
• Setup on stars selected by shuffle or LRSstars
• Saves 10 images with the guider that has 2+ stars in the field of view.
• Report this in the time in the RA report and in an e-mail to Gary and Matthew.

Repeat until you get 10 fields on both GC1 and GC2.