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• While we were trying to make the camera more stable, which is very hard to do.
  • The struggle of the camera stabilization (a digression): The set screw on the moving part of the clamp has to be loosened, then the clamp screw (the visible black knob) has to be loosened the camera has to point to the desired place. After pointing at the desired place, one must hold it while both the clamp and set screw is being tightened. If only one of them is tight then the camera moves from its intended location. Set screw alone makes it pretty stable, clamp by itself does not make it stable at all. The combination of them gets it in the stable position in the yesterdays log I mentioned. The azimuthal instability is still a problem and as it rotates azimuthally it gets loser. It is a positive feedback loop.
• During the process outlined above we gave too much weight to the camera and clamp went down.
• It also appeared that lens of the camera was loosened. It can be tightened by the set screws it has, however, the holes are too small and screws are flat head. Our flathead screwdrivers is not small enough to get in to these holes. We were still able to tighten it good enough.
• When I tried to take pictures after all the corrections, the flashes did not appear in the photos. I applied the scientific method to find out what was wrong:
  1. Are all the components on. The easy fixes:
     
     1. The camera is pointing to the pegboard and Eos Utility live shooting shows the pegboard.
     2. The remote flash trigger is on.
     3. The remote receiver is on and is receiving the signal.
     4. The Xenon lamp is powered.
        These were all properly working
  2. Does the flashlight come out of the initial optical fiber before it reaches the filters? It does.
  3. Does it go through the filters successfully. I removed the filters from the apparatus to put filters between two optical fibers. ND 1.8 may have been too much to see the light. I saw that light travels through the apparatus.
  4. Does it reach to the end of 1 to 7 optical fiber. It does.
  5. Elana suggested that maybe the flashlight somehow got dimmer and and ND filter of 1.8 would be too much. Following that suggestion, I removed the ND filters and made the of apparatus simply a bypass. When I was going to run the test, I got kicked out of the dome because my time was up. Elana told me she still was not able to see the sources in the pictures with no ND filters. She also said she might have made a simple mistake. I will try again tomorrow.

Summary of the current situation after three days:

The logistical situation:

• I have only 6 days left to get this done.
• Hopefully I will be able to stay a few night next week and work on the project 17 hours rather than only 7 hours.

What is working or has worked before:

• We found ways to mount the camera and pegboard without a tripod which would possibly disturb movement in the AuxTel Dome
• We found ways to make the pegboard and camera face each other, above ground. It needs further stabilization.
• We can take pictures of the flash sources and relatively make instant analysis with highly abstracted code.

Stubbs comments- 

This looks like great progress, bravo. We need to be sure the cables and other elements are not trip hazards, and so I suggest running them under the grating floor somebow. Also the camera isn't pointed quite in the direction I was expecting but I'm sure you guys have that figured out. Finally, we need to be sure we aren't obstructing the new in-dome illumination system that Patrick and Parker are installing. 
Happy to arrange a time to talk over zoom tomorrow if you like. 
 

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