Monday Funday

Time/Date

20230206T1900-2300

People

Onkar, Roy, joined later by Gabriel (for 30 mins), then Matt, Natalie, Katie, Azzan. Roy left at 2145

Spaces Occupied

433C, 401, Dome

Goals

1. Open things up

2. Close them down

3. Observe stars, blazars, and maybe Mars

4. Observe ZTF

Log

1. Followed opening procedure

2. Connected cameras to scope

   1. planetary on axis

   2. deep sky on finderscope

3. added SECOND MONITOR WOAH THERES TWO NOW

   1. streamed to discord the second screen, left half being the finderscope, right half being the deep view

4. pointing at Capella

5. Attempting to focus

   1. Attempted to measure Seeing via FWHM reported by SharpCap in pixels.

   2. Calculated 25'' for planetary camera (13.8 pix average for best FWHM measure)

      1. 2.4um/pix → 6500 mm focus for DFM Scope → pixScale/focalLength*206.265

   3. Couldn't accurately determine focal length of finderscope, so couldn't figure angular resolution of detector easily

6. It was very clear that the tracking is off with on-axis camera

7. Moved to ZTF, similar to last time: just fuzzy

8. Took some saves with finderscope (darn: saved as PNGs)

   1. Onkar fixed this. Roy only made it worse

   2. onkar update: pixel resolution is still off idk how to fix it but still usable

9. Moved to a variety of blazar objects:

   1. m87 - on Eastern horizon. Will rise through haze after clouds arrive

   2. 3c 273 - in virgo, below the horizon

   3. ngc 1275 - Sparse

   4. ngc 3862 - east, lots of light pollution in that direction

   5. m77 - Galaxy, tried to get good exposures

      1. unsuccessful, not sure if I was looking at it

   6. m42 - great orion nebula, beautiful as always

   7. ngc 1432 - pleiades maia nebula, purdy

10. SHUTTING DOWN - Shutters incident

    1. Shutters no shut

    2. Onkar pressed "close shutters" on DFM TCS, activity message said "OPENING SHUTTERS"

    3. Matt visually confirmed, shutters no shut

    4. Onkar scratched head and had the bright idea to click "open shutters"

    5. since shutters already open, shutters no open more

    6. Onkar let it run until it stopped on its own, clicked "close shutters" again

    7. same issue as before, shutters no shut, same activity message on DFM, very sad

    8. attempted shutting shutters after flipping off "auto dome" and "track", still nothing

    9. Onkar gave up at this point trying to close the shutters via DFM TCS

    10. Onkar went upstairs to shutter panel, flipped switch from "remote" to "manual"

        1. I forgot if its actually called manual but the one that's not remote, ykwim

        2. anyway

    11. after flipping switch, closed shutters via switches in shutter panel

    12. after shutters closed, onkar put shutter switches back to neutral and the command switch from "manual" back to "remote"

    13. will test if shutters open and close via DFM software at next working session

ToDo

1. Second security camera needs to be installed near dome encoder.

2. Get static IP for network switch

3. Roy: Bring side table in for control room

Notes

1. Tracking is bad. – We observed Capella move upwards out of the frame over the course of minutes while using the on-axis planetary CMOS.

2. Dome shutter woes – @Onkar Rekhi 

3. Need to ensure data is saved in FITS files. PNGs are dumb. - Roy

Weather

NOAA: 30% sky cover

WU: 0%-10% sky cover

CSC: Poor transparency, Poor Seeing

Data

SharpCap Standard folder on DC and also on googleDrive