Day 1: 12/06/22:
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- Plan for the day:
- Take the time stamps of all the files, reorganize the files in a way that we only use good files.
- Make it very clear in jupyter notebook what I did.
- Back all the data up into the cluster
- Run the analysis.
- If additional time, work to make DIMSUM sturdier.
- Writing the following the next day (12/15/22)
- Ran the analysis and the graphs are available in the jupyter notebook.
- Overall, the data does not seem to useful, as the sources get worse, the differential motion measured increased. I did several cuts to data with respect times of source quality. As the time passes (and source quality decreased) the differential image motion was simply more. I do not know if it can be trusted. I still have all the datas in the csvs.
- At the end of second run we have a lot of dark files, when I checked the hardware out today it seemed fine.
- We attempted to make both the camera and the pegboard more sturdy.
- Mounted the camera directly on top of the L rail. It is harder to adjust but more sturdy. Such a mount made the camera higher than before and unable to tilt. To address that we moved the pegboard up. Today we will see whether the higher pegboard will be blocked by the telescope. Telescope was not able to rotate last night.
- We debugged the focusing and ghosting issue with continuous light sources. Even in the most focused case, the sources seem to have ghosting affects. The ghosting did not get fixed when we relieved pressure from the optical fiber, changed the location of the source in the pegboard, or how far we put through the fiber to the thing it's holding, or whether we are using sm1 holders or what Elana had used in her previous setup. Here are examples of ghosting we see:
- I ran some analysis with the more sturdy setup. It looks decent. I also did two more tests when the fan downstairs was open. Unfortunately in one of the tests the window was not open so the fan did not ork probably. I was also only allowed to work it up to 20Hz.
- Overall, the view from the camera, the camera itself, and the pegboard itself look like this:
- Backed up both of the observing runs to the cluster. Going to back up the additional tests as well.
12/15/22: Day 8:
- Further document the Jupyter notebook about the observations of the tests of the night.
- Back the rest of the data up to cluster.
- Copy the local data to the external disk as well.
- As soon as the telescope is able to rotate again check whether the new setup is blocked by the telescope.
- If not blocked. That is the new final setup of the dimsum.
- Make a test with fan on 100Hz and check if the setup can take it.
- If it passes that test as well, make the setup permanent. This includes:
- Making the cables trip proof by running them under the grating and tying the optical fibers to the rail.
- Put the box and power adaptors to the corner
- Clean up the mess and decide what to bring back.
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- Last day we could be on the summit.
- Today and last night I got the DIMSUM to its final state and professional looking.
- A problem: Not all sources are identified in a brighter dome.
- The setup is a 1 to 7 optical fiber which have 1 to 4 optical fibers connected to four of the ends. One of the fibers of 1 to 4 optical fibers did not work and one of them was very dim compared to others. So I had omitted those two. That left us with 14 sources. Then I had added the remaining 3 fibers from 1 to 7 to the pegboard. With that I was getting 17 sources.
- That ended up creating a brightness difference between the sources and with an ND filter of avoiding the saturation of brightest sources the dimmest sources were not seen in a brighter dome (before astronomical twilight).
- Changed the setup in the last day and omitted the direct fibers coming from the 1 to 7 fiber. Instead I added dim 1 to 4 fiber which gave us 15 sources. Doing that I decreased the ND filter to 1 from 1.5. Even with the ND filter of 1, the count of the dimmest source was very dim. It was able to be detected but I doubt we may run into the same issue in a brighter dome. I do not understand why some sources coming from the same 1 to 4 optical fiber can have different brightness. That is the case even in the continuous light source. If the fibers of 1 to 7 and 1 to 4 do not divide the light equally, I believe that is a very unnecessary uncertainty.
- Final setup is 15 sources with nd filter 1.
- Having possible plane of focus and ghosting issues made me come up with ways to make my analysis code way more configurable and flexible with equal success. I had an algorithm which simply showed the sources qualitatively without really relating them to particular source identified.
- I made two upgraded functions where when sources are shown qualitatively. I also made finding sources higher abstracted. All source finding is done by python source extractor which is exactly the same as c and part of cython.
- find_sources: is a function that takes a path/to/file and a threshold as an input and returns the sources identified ordered by x and y coordinates.
- show_sources: is a function that shows the sources identified in a box that has dimensions 4 times the fwhm.\
- show_sources_3d: makes 3d plots of the sources to have quantitative understanding of the source quality and effect of ghosting.
- Sample output of show_sources:
View file name 2d_test.pdf height 250 - Sample output of show_sources_3d:
View file name 3d_test.pdf height 250 - I took photographs of the setup for documentation including:
- Taking the lens cap of the camera.
- Turning the camera on.
- Making sure camera setting is in on M.
- Turning on the remote flash trigger.
- Turning on the remote flash receiver.
- Turning on the power source.
- I also took photographs of possible trouble shooting:
- The continuous halogen lamp light source for debugging the focus if needed.
- The screw to easily rotate the plane of pegboard.
- Additional AA batteries in case the receiver or trigger runs out of battery.
- The filter tool that lets us change the ND filtering.
- I am going to write a documentation of the setups needed to take data with the setup.
- I am also going to make a sample jupyter notebook which can be duplicated and the title could be changed which runs through the possible steps of DIMSUM analysis. The notebook will be more concise than the notebook I used for documentation. However, Craig told me that people would actually follow analysis steps through a notebook.
- Finally, we packed everything and left the Auxtel dome cleaner than it was.
- All of the data we took is backed up in the external disk which currently has 1.8Tb of free space and in the cluster.
- The data is in a file called december_22_chile which has subdirectories of:
- december_22_chile_tests: that includes the raw files of the tests we did
- december_22_chile_csvs: results of the analysis of the differential motion tests and time stamps of the files in the test
- december_22_chile_pdfs: figures we made out of the csvs
- actual_observing_run: The main observing run that took place in 12/13/22
- observe-readjust: Continuation of observing run after the camera was adjusted.
From Stubbs:
Ok sounds like a partial success. I think the key think is to get a good dome-closed vs. dome-open comparison.
I don't understand the longer exposures. Is that with a single flash per image? If so then all the longer images would seem to do is add to the background and not the signal. Or are you running with constant light source?
I can certainly believe that dome rotation shakes things- During most image the dome is not rotating.
The focus change could well be due to temperature change of the lens. I can't remember if there is an f-stop ring on that lens or not... I think not. The depth of focus will increase if you make a smaller aperture in front of the lens. There is heavy duty Aluminum foil in the cardboard fan box at the base of the pier. You could try making a snout with a 1 inch off-axis hole and see if that (with reducing ND filter) helps with focus.
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