M101 and Astrometric Fields

Time

20230601T1830-0010

People

Connor, Onkar, Roy

Spaces

PHYS 401, 433C, Dome

Goals

1. Aim near horizon for sky flats

2. Point at Arcturus, collect seeing frame

   1. Alkaid, collect seeing frame

   2. Dubhe, collect seeing frame

3. Go to M101

   1. Frames

      1. Light frame: 20000-50000 COUNTS

      2. Darks: for above exposure time

      3. Flats from sky before

      4. Biases

   2. Color

      1. With ZWO filter set

         1. Calibration frames

            1. Flats

      2. Change to color camera

4. Astrometric Fields

   1. M5, M10, M12

   2. For each:

      1. Expose to nominal exposure

      2. Wait 5 mins

      3. Expose again

      4. Wait 5 mins

      5. Expose again

      6. Save with good headers/fileNames

5. Onkar works with NINA?

Log

1. Could not find filter wheel

2. Found some adapters after 20 minutes

3. Slewed to west for some attempts at sky flats

4. Took 10x flat frames in 20230601_skyFlats_

5. Pointed at Venus

6. Adjusted focus to 2100

7. Slewed to Arcturus

   1. Closed hatch

   2. Adjusted focus to 2104

   3. Used sharpcap FWHM monitor to get FWHM to 10.2 +-0.4

8. Arcturus: Magnitude 0.15 (reduced to 0.29)

   1. Alkaid: Magnitude 1.85 (reduced to 1.98)

9. Slewed to Alkaid

   1. ShapCap FWHM monitor showed ~9.9-10.3 +-0.3

10. Slewed to M5

    1. Took 3 60s captures 5 minutes apart on-axis

    2. Took some captures from finderscope

    3. Tried to use PhD2 for autoguiding

       1. PhD2 crashes during star guiding

    4. We got MaxIMDL license on DC and setup guider camera with MaxImDL

       1. The rates seem to be off – it over corrects and jumps the image around the screen

       2. Maybe look into better settings for MaxImDL autoguiding

    5. We also need to figure out why PHD2 is crashing so frequently

       1. Maybe reinstall

       2. Maybe use older version of software/drivers

       3. Update windows

       4. Check USB connections/power/bandwidths

       5. Check NVidia drivers – which affect this somehow ...

    6. Ugh

11. Closed up @ 0010

Notes

Figure out autoguiding

ToDo

Confirm seeing measurements

Measure tracking error

Weather

23 C outside

Data

Saved to drive