Instructions for taking afternoon domeflats

Important Safety Note

1. Only NOAO staff are allowed to take domeflats during the afternoon 2. Only Electronic Maintenance personnel or OAs are allowed to move the telescope or operate mirror covers

Afternoon Domeflat Instructions

1. Have electronic maintenance open the mirror covers, turn on 4MAPS, and move the telescope to the great white spot.

2. At 4pm, check to make sure there is no one in the dome and turn off the lights in the dome and in the visitor gallery. The latter are at the end of the control room by the door nearest the elevator.

3. Check to make sure the dome is dark.

4. Start up MOSAIC3 using the MOSAIC3 GUI:
   • First “Start Cameras”; an xterm pops up and executes a bunch of stuff. Wait for it to finish and hit “return” to dismiss it
   • Next “Start Mosaic” and wait for all the stuff to come up. This takes a while. Rearrange the innumerable windows as desired.

5. Once the system is up, set the project ID:

On the NGUI window, press the "Set Project" button and fill out the relevant information. For example:

Principal Investigator: Arjun Dey
PIs Email Address: dey@noao.edu
Actual Observers: Tristram Shandy, Bertram Wooster
Observing Assistant: Karen Butler
OA's Email Address: 4meter@noao.edu
Proposal Identifier: 2016A-0453
Telescope System: KPNO Mayall 4m
Science Instrument: Mosaic 3

6. Make sure the system came up OK:
   • in one of the mosaic3 xterm windows, type:

     > cd exec
     > ./ZERO.sh
     

   • when the zero is taken an displayed on the ximtool Real-Time Display, use the IRAF window to check the rms on each amplifier:

     cl> cd /data2/observer/20160211 (or whatever the directory is)
     cl> mscstat mos3.60123,fits (or whatever the filename is)
     

     The stddev column should have values that are all between 4 and 10 adu. If it is larger than this (typically 40 - 2000) on any amplifier, it means there is a problem and you need to reset and reinitialize the ccp. If this happens, then in the mosaic3 xterm window type:

     > nocs reset ccp
     > nocs init ccp
     

     and take two consecutive zero images:

     > ./ZERO.sh
     > ./ZERO.sh
     

     The first zero will look weird with a lot of saturated pixels. That is “normal”. The second zero should be OK. In the IRAF window, check the second xero using mscstat:

     cl> mscstat mos3.60125.fits (or whatever the filename is)
     

     If this is OK, then you are all ready to go.

7. Take 11 zeros:

In the exec directory on mosaic3, type:

./ZERO11.sh

This takes about 6 minutes to complete

8. Turn on the dome flat-field lamps:

Launch the “Flat-Field Lamp” gui which is on the right side of the left hand screen on mayall-2 Turn on the low-dome flats and turn them up to maximum (100%)

9. Take the domeflats:

In the exec directory on mosaic3 type:

> ./DFLATS_MzLS_zd.sh

This will take 11 domeflats in about 12 min. The counts should be ~18,000-20,000 adu.

10. When the domeflats are done, turn off the dome flat field lamps.

11. Take 11 zeros:

In the exec directory on mosaic3, type:

> ./ZERO11.sh

This takes about 6 minutes to complete

12. Ask the EM tech to return the telescope to zenith and close the mirror covers.

13. Shutdown the mosaic and camera software:
    • Stop MOSAIC (gui button on MOSAIC3 gui)
    • Stop Camera (gui button on MOSAIC3 gui)

14. Off to dinner! Yum yum!

I am putting these instructions on the wiki with some appropriate warnings.

Best regards,

Arjun