Shane Observing Checklist

Peter's Shane-centric version of Julia's take on Bernie's slightly expanded copy of JohnJohn's list

Observer: ____________

Date: ____________

These instructions are for Dewar 8 only! For instructions for dewar 6, see Julia's checklist.

Before Leaving Berkeley!

Access Information. You'll need the following info to be able to do anything at all.

  1. ____________ Diner access code
  2. ____________ user password

Target times. Get the twilight information from this page. If at Lick, check the printed calendar. During the summer, it's not corrected for DST! That is, if summer, add an hour to each of the times in the calendar.

  1. ____________ 12-degree dusk
  2. ____________ 12-degree dawn
  3. ____________ Dinner: 5 PM winter (= PST in effect), 6 PM summer (= PDT in effect)
  4. ____________ Target time of first exposure (probably a B star). Should be a bit before dusk, unless you have your times wrong or the person planning the run enjoys wasting telescope time.
  5. ____________ Target time to do ThAr and K: (3) + 30 minutes
  6. ____________ Target time to start flats: (3) - 45 minutes (or much sooner if more flats or longer flat exposures)
  7. ____________ Target time to fill dewar: (6) - 60 minutes
  8. ____________ Target time to finish exposing: (2) + 10 minutes

Everything make sense? (Flats should mostly happen over dinner.)

  1. _______ Copy target times to rest of checklist

Time 7: _________

Camera room: opening up
  1. _______ Fill CCD dewar first, to give most time for thermal relaxation. Correct dewar?!
  2. _______ Open collimator cover door (swings down), insert mask (with cross-hairs oriented right way, instructions on mask).
  3. _______ Open prism covers: swing 1 up, slide 2 out, store in safe place.
  4. _______ Carefully open grating cover from behind. Gently.
  5. _______ Turn off lights, leave. Gently.
  6. _______ Check CCD temperature: ~ -136 for dewar 8.
Readout Room: computer setup
  1. _______ Data taker (hamx?) should be running on shane (Sun machine in corner).
  2. _______ Start photon integrator on shane: open a new XTerm, showmidpt.
  3. _______ Change observer name: Z, 3, A.
  4. _______ Open logsheet.
    1. _______ In new xterm on gorgon, ssh to plato.
    2. _______ Run logsheets to get to right dir. Or just cd /u/user/planets/logsheets/.
    3. _______ Copy most recent logsheet or open pre-set one.
    4. _______ Update header with info on current run.
  5. _______ Open camera controls: in new xterm on gorgon, SSH to catpc, then hamit.
Slit room: prep
  1. _______ Look around for image rotator or any other weird stuff that's going to be in the way
  2. _______ Remove polar axis cover if necessary.
  3. _______ Warm up iodine: switch in back, "Run/Stop" button in front. Is T climbing? Remember that we're starting at room temp as measured in C
  4. _______ Remove clear plastic aperture plate cover, if it's there. Probably isn't.
  5. _______ Turn on fan to Medium.
  6. _______ Lights off, leave.
Readout Room: Focusing
  1. _______ Get focus settings in camera controller:
    1. ______ filter to clear (1)
    2. ______ lamp to Th-Ar (5)
    3. ______ decker, aperture plate to focus (a)
  2. _______ Change to focus params in data taker:
    1. _______ Integ. Time (B) to 20 sec
    2. _______ Window size (D) to 1000 rows by 1851 columns, origin 0 97.
    3. _______ Binning (E) to 1 by 1
    4. _______ Obs. type (F) to Normal fast
    5. _______ Recording (G) to not recorded
    6. _______ Object Name (I) to focus
    7. _______ Start exposure (R). Th-Ar "A line" should appear at about 760, 800. Looks like this (FIXME real image): 
                    @
                          *
                           *
                          *
                      * *

		.
	      .


             A
      To increase the row number of the A line by one, increase the height setting by 8.9 units. To increase the column number of the A line by one, increase the grating setting by 1.1 units.
  3. ______ Run focusing program
    1. ______ In new xterm, ssh plato, focus to change to focusing dir (or just cd /u/user/planets/focus), idl
    2. ______ Run it: IDL> foc,/hi,[/plt,/mark]
    3. ______ Focus pos must be bigger than 500000
    4. ______ Tweak grating and height as instructed by program, until lines are in boxes
    5. ______ Extra credit: Note focus FWHM. Nudge the “CCD Focus” setting back and forth, +/- 2, to minimize FWHM.
  4. ______ Recording (G) to disk. Save 1 focus image.
  5. ______ Close IDL
  6. ______ Update logsheet with grating, height, CCD Focus, focus, and an entry for the focus exposure.
  7. ______ Copy the focus image from shane (should be /data/d1.ccd) to /net/plato/u/user/planets/thar_archive/DDmonYY_d8thar.ccd.

Time 6: _________

Readout room: Start Flats

(The (B) column is for the beginning of the night and (E) is for the end.)

  1. ______ (B) ______ (E) decker, aperture plate to 640:5.0 (O like Oooooopen)
  2. ______ (B) ______ (E) Window size (D) to 1700 rows by 1851 columns, origin 0 97.
  3. ______ (B) ______ (E) Recording (G) to disk!!!!
  4. ______ (B) ______ (E) Object Name (I) to wideflat
  5. ______ (B) ______ (E) In new XTerm, SSH to catpc (not plato): cd focus to get to the focus directory, idl
  6. ______ (B) ______ (E) Then: IDL> autoflat, number=30, /time. The number parameter may vary if time is short; anything more than 10 should be OK.
  7. ______ (B) ______ (E) Enter 20 and 2 for bg12 and bg13 exposure times. The data taker will report an integration time of 20000s = 333.33 m. This is OK.
  8. ______ (B) ______ (E) Look at first flat, make sure it's OK. Not saturating (no flat top in column cut)? No iodine lines? (Yes to either of those is bad.)

Time 3: _________

Cafeteria: Eat dinner. Hooray!

Time 5: _________

Readout room: Flats Done
  1. ______ Update logsheet with info on flat exposures. If you are taking N flats, there should be an entry for exposures 2—N+1 and one for exposures N+2—2N+1.
Thorium-Argon Exposure
  1. _xxxxx_ (B) _xxxxx_ (E) Note that it is OK if the iodine cell is unfurled for the ThAr exposures; the ThAr lamp is later in the optical path.
  2. ______ (B) ______ (E) decker, aperture plate to 640:2.0 (L), same as for observing
  3. ______ (B) ______ (E) filter to clear (1)
  4. ______ (B) ______ (E) lamp to ThAr (5).
  5. ______ (B) ______ (E) Object Name (I) to thar
  6. ______ (B) ______ (E) Integ. Time (B) to 3 sec
  7. ______ (B) ______ (E) Start exposure and let it read out
  8. ______ (B) ______ (E) Update logsheet.
Iodine Exposure
  1. ______ (B) ______ (E) In the slit room:
    1. ______ (B) ______ (E) Check: is iodine cell warmed up?
    2. ______ (B) ______ (E) Move iodine cell into optical path.
  2. ______ (B) ______ (E) Back in the readout room:
    1. _xxxxx_ (B) _xxxxx_ (E) decker, aperture plate still at 640:2.0 (L), same as for observing
    2. ______ (B) ______ (E) filter to bg13 (3)
    3. ______ (B) ______ (E) lamp to Polar Quartz (8).
    4. ______ (B) ______ (E) Object Name (I) to iodine
    5. ______ (B) ______ (E) Integ. Time (B) to 22 sec
    6. ______ (B) ______ (E) Read this whole step! Start exposure, then pause after 2 seconds!
    7. ______ (B) ______ (E) filter to bg12 (2)
    8. ______ (B) ______ (E) Resume (u) exposure and let it finish.
    9. ______ (B) ______ (E) Check for iodine lines. At centered zoom level 1, should see lines on top but not on bottom of image.
    10. ______ (B) ______ (E) Update logsheet with an entry for the iodine exposure.
Wrap Up
  1. ______ filter to clear (1)
  2. ______ lamp to No Lamps (1).
  3. ______ Start the pointing program: coords from an X terminal. To make the font bigger and more legible, type Control-= in the window.
  4. ______ Load /u/user/starlists/jj_subgiants.list for the starlist.
Slit room: Setup photon integrator
  1. ______ Bottom switch on
  2. ______ Slowly dial voltage up to 705 (V: 125 to 150).
  3. ______ Top switch on: whine noise should start.
  4. ______ Check that gain dial is at 0.1 (not 1, 10, 100).
  5. ______ Pull plunger (left of aperture plate) out. Listen for whirr noise.
  6. ______ Lights off. Should be completely dark. Leave.

Time 4: _________

Observe! No checklist can help you here. But, that being said ...
  1. ______ Check midpoint time of first exposure matches output of date -u on your computer
  2. ______ Check for iodine lines every so often! The cell can crap out.

Time 8: _________

Slit room: Integrator Shutdown
  1. _____ Plunger in
  2. _____ Slowly dial down voltage to zero
  3. _____ Two power switches (top and bottom) to off
Readout Room: ThAr and Iodine again
  1. ______ Iodine exposure as at beginning of night
  2. ______ ThAr exposure as at beginning of night
Slit room: Prep for flats
  1. ______ Move iodine cell out of path, heater off, fan off. Lights out.
  2. ______ Put notes on two slit room and two camera room doors: “Flats, stay out until 10 AM”
Readout Room: Flats again
  1. ______ Email mhtechs@ucolick.org with an equivalent message.
  2. ______ Start flats routine as before
  3. ______ Update logsheets with prospective exposures
  4. ______ In logsheets, run IDL> jjlogchecker

Finally

Sleep! Did you put up the signs? And email mhtechs?

The Morning After

Camera Room: Close up
  1. ______ Refill the CCD dewar
  2. ______ If last night of observing, close up the spectrometer
    1. ______ Close grating cover, gently, from behind
    2. ______ Close prism covers: slide 2 in, swing 1 down
    3. ______ Remove crosshair mask, close collimator cover door

Comments on Checklist?

Write them below.