2012 Aug 11 TCS3 Engineering (Denault, Volquardsen )

Goals

TCS3 pointing run. (1nd half of night, 6pm-12:00pm)
This run was done after the IRTF Mirror aluminizing of 2012-Aug.
Using tcs software V120627.

1. Encoder Measurement

The pointing run request was made on friday. There was no time
to do an encoder measurement.

Noted:
  1. IQUP Data is stale: TM1, TM2, TM3, TMR5
  2. IRTF Camera's images are stale - need to setup cron job on irtfweb.
  3. Only spex, and wavefront sensor is on. NSFCAM and cshell is off the MIM.
  4. There was some confusion on the correct collimation values.
     Eric thinks he is using the correct value from Mike, but the
     TCS3 collimation table does not match.
     We used -0.79 1.49... Are there the correct spex collimation values?

2. Quick Guiding & Tracking Measurement

Used smokey the guider and took data to see how good/bad the tracking is.
Look at how far the star difted after 5 min.
Just list smokey guide on a star, and monitor it correction in smokey and TCS-Graph2.

Drift rate were -0.015667,-0.000389.
TCS Servo tracking following error was Range: 0.077 Std: 0.017 (very good!).
Note: TCS3 has a fixed pt.rate of -0.0100 0.000 after every slew.

3. benchmark1 

goto zenith, stop, ape.set.pmac.
filename: b1.dat
Pattern: benchmark13

tpoint file:  b1.dat
.ape   file:  b1.ape

4. Take Pointing Data

Starting about 8:40am

goto zenith, stop, ape.set.pmac.
filename: pointing.dat
Pattern: Grid
Sep: 13 (gives 70 starts).

EricV finished taking data at 9:45 (just over an 1 hours)
At zenith ape - encoder is: -28.1  1.2

tpoint file:  pointing.dat
.ape   file:  pointing.ape

Used tpoint to get new coefficients:
   tpoint RMS is 16.48
   Masked the following points: 56, 67, 68, 69.
   Sky RMS =  14.57
   Will used these values.

pointing.ps
pointing.pdf - tpoint graphs (postscript and PDF)
pointing_coeff.txt - resulting coefficients.

Sky RMS = 15.84

Updated .tcs-init with new coefficients
die, and restarted TCS to read new .tcs-init file.

4. benchmark2

Check telescope setup:
   apes.set.pmac to zero encoders.

filename is b2.dat
pattern benchmark 13
start tracking & initialize pointing

   tpoint file:  b2.dat
   .ape   file:  b2.ape

5. b1 vs b2

Now, let's compare the 2 benchmarks:

   Here is a graph of HA error of b1.dat vs b2.dat
   
   gnuplot to make the graphs:
       plot   'b1.ape' using 10 with linespoints  title 'b1 HA pt.madj'
       replot 'b2.ape' using 10 with linespoints  title 'b2 HA pt.madj'

   Here is a graph of DEC error of b1.dat vs b2.dat
   
   gnuplot to make the graphs:
      plot   'b1.ape' using 11 with linespoints  title 'b1 Dec pt.madj'
      replot 'b2.ape' using 11 with linespoints  title 'b2 Dec pt.madj'

New coefficients look better that the old one.
Will keep the new pointing coefficients.

6. Guiding with smokey

Checking the guiding with smokey...
Star at HA,Dec -00:37, 15:54, Drift rate were  0.001, 0.002 after 10 mins.
Same start at   00:50, 15:54, driff rate were  0.003, 0.001 for    6 mins.
Big improvement on the HA guide rate drift.

Completed at 11:33pm.