Observation Night

Time/Date

20230218T1600-2245

People

Obs/Astropol: Onkar, Jackson, Shrey, Meyer, Gabriel
GUEST: Olivia

Spaces Occupied

433C, 401, Dome

Goals

1. Make things work

2. Observe venus DURING THE DAY

3. Observe:

   1. Mars

   2. ZTF

   3. M42 (Great Orion Nebula)

   4. M31 (Andromeda Galaxy)

   5. M1 (Crab nebula)

   6. M81 (Bode's Galaxy)

   7. 3c 273 (Blazar)

Log

1. Followed startup procedure -onkar, shrey, meyer

2. Installed polarimeter on-axis and zwo pro on spotter scope

   1. On-Axis connected to ____ Cable

   2. Finder scope connected to ____ Cable

3. Attempted viewing of venus

   1. Very bright

   2. and cloudy

   3. no joy

4. Taking off PICSI

5. Figuring out filter wheel in sharpcap/zwo software

   1. In sharpcap, go to:

   2. Settings - hardware tab - filter wheel

      1. if filter wheel not show up in tabs, manually choose the filterwheel in "select hardware"

   3. "it thinks there are two, there are not two" - Jackson

6. installed color wheel for on-axis scope

7. REATTEMPTING VENUS

   1. we done goofed, the mirror doors were shut

   2. reslewed to zenith, installed normal on-axis camera, opened mirror doors

   3. found in spotter, taking a long time to find on axis

      1. It's because we are bad

      2. nvm Jackson found it immediately, I'm just bad -Onkar

   4. found it, focus at 2275.0

      1. nvm nvm jackson lost it

      2. FOUND IT AGAIN

   5. spotter x:3416, y:1701

   6. set next object position as venus for better pointing
      
      

      1. tcs-telescope-initialization-"use next object position"-apply

   7. took way too many captures

8. ATTEMPTING CAPELLA

   1. goal is to get our focus better

      1. success kinda

   2. spotter x:3430, y:1865

9. Attempting Mars

   1. spotter: x:3432 y:1756

   2. updated object position

   3. jackson is good at finding 

10. Attempting ZTF

    1. on-axis was on target! 

    2. spotter x:3417 y:1694

       1. neglect this, not entirely centered on on-axis scope

11. Attempting m31

    1. found it, mostly on target for on-axis

    2. spotter x:3411, y:1702

12. Attempting m42

    1. on target, woooo

    2. pretty as always

13. Attempting m1

    1. jackson extremely confident in our pointing, taking capture immediately

    2. some point during this, gabirel dropped his laptop and lost a screw, if anybody finds a screw in the control room its probably his

    3. okayish images, kinda smol

14. Attempting m81

    1. okayish images, lots of stars but no real nebulosity

15. Attempting MKN 421

    1. slew right ascesion: 11 hours, 4 min, 27.3 sec

    2. slew declination: 38 degs, 12 min, 32 sec

    3. clouds rolling in at this point in time, visually confirmed via spotter scope, take data with grain of salt

    4. 26,000 lum

    5. ordered pizza

    6. did five 3 min exposures in V filter

    7. did another five 3 min exposures in B filter

16. Closing up

    1. slewed to zenith

    2. closed mirror doors

    3. taking dark frames for on-axis

    4. pizza time

    5. should be noted we closed shutters after taking darks

    6. when using ascom to close shutters, bottom shutter closes early and motor keeps running, may be a good idea to not remote close the shutters and instead, manually close them

    7. we left the cameras ON GASP , seemed like a good idea to keep the system as is if its working great and to reduce wear and tear

ToDo

1. check discord permissions for #announcements_obs, it would appear folks with the @observatory_fans role could post there 

2. look into x y distribution on for targets appearing on-axis vs their respective x y values in spotter scope

3. sharpcap weirdness again when running two instances. Before, this had happened when both cameras were plugged into the icron extender. This time, only the spotter scope was plugged into the icron extender and the on-axis camera was plugged into LBD2.

4. adhesive velcro to slap the remote icron extender box onto the side of gam-lite would make running cables easier, the gam-lite power cable would have to be run up to the network power strip thing, making the cat 7 cable the only cable running up from the steel cable enclosure box thing to the scope.

5. Organize wiki better? (Onkar says to Roy )

Notes

• Spotter scope: 952mm focal length based on Google Search of model number (?)

• Adjust spotter scope focus, looks pretty good but could be perfect -Jackson

• We got some real gosh darn good pointing tonight (what does this meannn?) (it meannnns we were able to point at stuff and see them on-axis pretty much immediately and not have to hunt for them, also seeing was really good)

Weather

CDK: 10% cloud cover, average seeing, average transparency

Data

SharpCap Standard folder on DC which is mirrored on googleDrive