Observation Session 20230308

Time/Date

20230308T1830-2359

People

Onkar(left at 1900 and came back at 2100), Connor(left at 2300), Shrey, Gabriel(left at 2300), Natalie, Tara, Matt

Spaces Occupied

401, 433C, Dome

Goals

• Attach ICRON box to the telescope

• Attempt autoguiding using finder scope camera

• Attempt taking images of some blazars

Log

• Turned on ASCOM, TCS, Thesky6, opened dome

• Onkar mounted the ICRON Extender Box using double-sided gorilla tape on the GAM-Lite

• Connected the ICRON to outlet 3 of the remote power strip, relieving the small ladder of its ICRON holding duty.

• Closed the dome and covered baffle/finder scope in order to take dark frames on PHD2

• Collected dark frames for the on-axis camera first (ZWO ASI 178MM), then the for the finder scope (ZWO ASI 2600MM Pro)

  • Select the desired camera, then follow Top Taskbar → Darks → Dark Library → Start to begin taking dark frames

  • Made a new profile for each camera (ASI 178MM and ASI 2600MM Pro) so that multiple dark libraries could be saved

  • Retook dark frames on each respective profile

  • Uncovered main scope and finder scope and opened the dome

• Slewed to Orion

  • Attempted to focus the main scope using SharpCap FWHM focusing tool to the best of our ability and the seeing

  • Connected on-axis camera to PHD2 and attempted to begin guiding, but couldn't get a bright enough source to guide with

  • Switched to finder scope profile and connected finder scope camera to PHD2 and began guiding

  • Calibration failed because PHD2 couldn't register enough relative movement of any source with tracking set to 15.042 arcsec/sec

• Onkar comes back.

• Slewed to Mars and fixed the pointing in the on-axis camera

  • set object position

• slewed to capella

  • set object position

  • fixing the focus, set to 2270.9

• slewed to HD 81567

  • Close to celestial eq and apparent magnitude of 6 (why does this matter?)

    • being close to the celestial eq matters because this would have the most apparent movement with not so great tracking

    • the apparent magnitude being around 5-6 is preferable to phd2, not 100% sure why

  • set object position

  • attempting guiding

  • phd2 having trouble locating the star, very fuzzy (why does this matter?)

    • It would seem that the fuzzier the star, even if the center mass is super bright, phd2 has a hard time keeping a lock on target

  • attempting to increase SNR from 70 to 150 (what does this mean and how do you do it?)

    • this is the signal to noise ratio, the higher the number the higher the contrast (I think)

  • tried forcing phd2 to autoguide anyway, could not accurately tell if it was guiding or just following the star

  • onkar stole speaker, installed onto DC

  • advanced settings in phd2 (brain button)

    • changed to saturation via star-profile under star saturation detection

    • target SNR at 3.5

    • noise reduction from none to 2x2 mean under general properties

    • follows for a bit, then loses star "star lost, HFD"

  • attempting guiding of dimmer star to the bottom right of the picture

    • set minimum star HDS from 1.5 to 1 

    • noticing SNR changing values between exposures (27-32)

    • turns out it was a hot pixel, attempting original star again

  • it was pretty bad, see screenshot below for calibration woes.

    • the screenshot is on the dc, will upload soon -onkar

• slewed to Gaia DR2 810952158347151360

  • reduced gain back to 0 (why does this matter?)

    • wanted to adjust exposure before adjusting gain

  • exposure at 0.5 sec, saturated 

  • finds star, loses star, sad

  • SNR hovering around 20

  • eventually got to guiding

  • "keeps making the maximum corrections for each command" -Gabriel 

  • "phd2 cannot make sufficient corrections in ra and dec" -phd2

  • verifying settings in phd2

    • when connecting mount and camera, phd2 suddenly closes

• abandoning autoguiding at this point

  • took some images of Gaia DR2 810952158347151360

    • took 5 captures at 5 minute intervals 3 times (5 captures at 11:16PM, 5 captures at 11:21PM and 5 captures at 11:26PM)

  • Filter wheel was not showing up on Sharpcap, tried to fix it by updating drivers and restarting DC, but that didn't work

  • Going to attempt again tomorrow

• closing up

  • made sure it closed this time -Onkar

  • visually verified dome was closed - Shrey

ToDo

• fix filter wheel drivers

• look into color camera color formats

• investigate phd2 further

  • try decreasing "Max RA Duration" under File→ advanced settings→ algorithm or "guide rate" under DFMTCS→ telescope→ rates→ handle paddle rates

Notes

• When changing the camera being used for guiding in PHD2, change the profile being used before connecting the different camera

  • Top Taskbar in PHD2 → Guide → Connect Equipment → (Disconnect the equipment being used) →  Equipment Profile → (Choose what profile you want to use and select the matching camera)

  • In the bottom right hand corner, there should be a box that says "Dark". If the text is GREEN, then the dark frame library is being used properly. If the text is RED, something probably went wrong and new dark frames may need to be taken.

  • When you click on the "Connect" button on the camera, if it gives a "Camera Change Warning", click NO and make sure the camera matches the profile

Weather

All sources are reporting clear skies (<2% cloud coverage across all boards)! Astropsheric and ClearDarkSky both are reporting average transparency and poor seeing, so any images might be blurry. -natalie

Data