News and Updates (Older News)
- August 2011: Red Channel Chip 3 back Chip 3 was installed over the summer shutdown.
- 22 May 2011: Non-zero initial offsets handled correctly With the latest LBC software designed to work with the binocular TCS, non-zero initial offsets are handled correctly and no longer ignored.
- 6 April 2011: New version of OBGUI Please note that a new version of the OB generating GUI has been released, GUIv2.0_20110406.zip. This new version corrects the positions of the focus and guide technical chips in the Interactive Pointing tool. Please use this when adjusting pointings to put bright stars on these chips. There is also an LBC template for ds9 which is being developed.
- April 2011: Exposure times reported in LBC-Red headers are 1.3 sec too long A 1.3 second offset appears in the EXPTIME, TEXPTIME as reported in the LBC Red headers. Based on flat field count rates, this offset is not believed to be real; the shutter was open for the duration commanded. This began during the night on 2 December 2010, is not always present, and is currently under investigation. More news will follow. This exposure time offset was traced to an electronics problem internal to LBC-Red and corrected over the summer shutdown.
- 26 March 2011: Binocular version of LBC code replaces Master-Slave version The LBC is fully compatible with the binocular version of the TCS. Under this binocular version, guide corrections from both Red and Blue technical chips are distributed between the mount and both primary mirrors. This change should be transparent to the observer, except that the implementation of guiding as Master-Slave is no longer meaningful. Existing OB files may still be used, and the assigments of Master or Slave to an LBC channel are now just ignored.
- March 2011: LBC Red Chip 3 out of service Chip #3 of LBC Red is temporarily out of service due to bonding damages incurred at the end of February. A new chip has been ordered and will be installed during summer shutdown.
- March 2011: Flat field OB scripts The perl script which was developed to create binocular flat field scripts at either the nominal (hour angle = -00:30 and declination = 27 degrees) or custom positions has been modified to scale Red/Blue channel exposure times for the various filter combinations. The script and a readme file are available from Mkskyflat1.tar. Exposure time scalings are still being confirmed. To set these explicitly, include the times (seconds) on the command line: ./mkskyflat1.pl [e|m] PA filtB filtR timeB timeR
- May 2010: Automatic focusing using technical chip 2 Focus corrections are now computed automatically using pupils on the AO technical chip. These are used to adjust the primary mirror in between exposures within an OB. The operation of this is transparent to the observer and always ON (so long as there are sufficiently bright stars on the AO tech chip). See preparing for observing with LBC for guidelines on preparing observations to take full advantage of this new development.
- May 2010: First offset must be 0,0 The first offset in a dither sequence must be (delta_RA, delta_DEC) = (0,0). Any non-zero offsets will be ignored.
- March 2010: Flat field scripts must include target information The set of flat field OBs, which did not slew the telescope but were used to take a series of dithered observations about the current telescope position, now will no longer dither unless they also slew. This means that you will need edit the OB to enter the RA and DEC of the flat field position. A perl script, mkskyflat1.pl will create a binocular OB to take a series of 5 dithered exposures about a specific or 'standard' position and a binocular test OB. The script and associated files, including a README file, are contained in the tarfile, Mkskyflat1.tar (updated to include latest changes of 2011 April).