MCP Observing Notes

Here is a place to store any notes on individual observing sessions.

Date ObserverSorted ascending Project Summary
8 Feb 2008 AT 7A66_19 Good weather, Tsys~40K. Observed 11 BAT sources and 3 SDSS sources, no new detections.
8 Feb 2008 AT 7A34_21 Monitoring observation of NGC 2273, Tsys~42K.
12 Feb 2008 AT 7A66_21 Tsys~45K in the beginning, 55K toward the end. Monitoring observations for J1202+3519 and CGCG 268-086, Tint~ 1hr each. 2 SDSS sources surveyed with Tint~20min (due to higher Tsys), no new detections.
10 Mar 2008 AT 7A66_27 Survey. Finished all SDSS sources, 6 sources with 10 min int,3 with 20 min, Tsys~52K due to low elevation. 1 BAT source observed with 15 min int and 19 snap sources. High Tsys for snap souces (~75 K) due to low elevation, 10 min integrations.
06 May 2008 AT 7A66_42 Great weather. Spent 1 hr on NGC 6323. Surveyed 10 sources from MCP-catalog.cat and 20 snap sources. No new masers.
29-30 Dec 2007 AT/IZ 7A_066 Began with good weather. Tsys ~40K. Weather degenerated over the last three hours of the session to Tsys~75K. Monitored UGC 3789 (3 hrs. integration time), MRK 1419 (3 hrs. integration time), UGC 6093 (100 mins integration time), and J1346+5228 (80 mins integration time).
3 Feb 2008 AT/IZ 7A66_17 Started with good weather. Tsys~40K, steadily increasing to ~55K toward the end. Observed 34 SDSS sources, no new detections. Last 3 sources observed with Tint=20 min/src. Ended with monitoring observation of NGC 6323 for 40 min (to keep track of the flare detected on Feb. 1.
15 Feb 2008 AT/IZ 7A66_22 Tsys~40 K in the beginning, icreasing to 45K toward the end. 20 sources till (AT). IZ finished all brown sources with exception of 152412+083241.
1 Mar 2008 AT/IZ 7A66_26 Started with monitoring, NGC 1194 (50 min), CGCG 185-028 (60 min), survey from snap.cat
14 Dec 2007 AT/IZ/JB 7A34_09 Excellent weather. Tsys <40K. Additional peak scans around sunrise. Ran test on N4258 to check setup.
19 Dec 2007 IZ 7A_034_13 9:00-10:00 am. Snowing! Terrible pointing and focus scans. Yielded telescope to low frequency project. Not useful data (~5 mins)
19 Dec 2007 IZ 7A_034_14 5:00-9:00pm. Cloudy. Tsys ~45-55K. Bad baselines on pointing scans. Bad LST range for SDSS survey sources. Monitored Mrk 1 and NGC 591. Surveyed sources from the extended apparently normal galaxy list.
13 Jan 2008 IZ 7A34_17 WX: Great, deteorated a little, Tsys: 40K -> 45K. Monitored NGC 2273, then survey. Spectrometer was in bad state. Not realized and fixed until the last hour. Problem resulted in one beam not being used by getnod, i.e. half the efficiency. Survey sources with bad spectrometer setting are marked in brown (get 5 mins on each of these at a later date?).
27 Jan 2008 IZ 7A66_12 Good WX, Tsys: 40-45K. Surveyed SDSS sources (10 min each) and BAT sources (15 min each). Possible detection, SDSS source 163040+302920 (CGCG 168-018).
1 Feb 2008 IZ 7A66_15 Good weather. Monitored NGC 6323. Tsys ~ 45K at the beginning (el ~ 37 deg) and improved to ~40 K at the end (el ~ 70 deg).
11 Feb 2008 IZ 7A66_20 Marginal weather at the beginning, Tsys~55K. Monitored NGC 1320 (~1hr. integration time). Weather got worse, snowing, Tsys~60k. Monitored SDSS sources ("brown" sources which only got 5 mins before), 20 min/src, 6 src. Weather improved for the last hour, Tsys~45K. Continued monitoring but reduced time to 10min/src (still "brown" srcs), 4 sources (last one only got 5 mins because I ran out of time). No new detections.
20 Mar 2008 IZ 7A66_32 Survey from the snap catalog. Excellent opacity, Tsys ~ 35K but very windy. Horrible pointings until about 9:30pm. Sources observed before UGC 6039 might have to be observed again. I've left them yellow. Sources observed after are black as usual. Possible detection in NGC 3614.
15 Dec 2007 IZ/AT 7A_034_10/11 Poor opacity. Low wind, Tsys ~55K. Possible detection of new maser source 165716+275059 (later identified to be known source NGC 6264). Accidently wrote last survey observation to new file.
26 Dec 2007 IZ/AT 7A_066 Ok weather. Tsys ~40-50K. Monitoring of NGC 6323 (~2.5 hrs of integration time) and NGC 1194 (~3 hrs. integration time). NGC 1194's blue shifted features appear to be ~3-4 times brighter than in the earlier spectrum.
18 Dec 2007 IZ/JB 7A_034_12 Ok weather. Tsys ~40-50K. Survey as well as monitoring of 1194.
5 Oct 2006 JB 6C39 Supposed to observe N1194. I wasn't able to point/focus because of rain, so abandoned the run after several attempts.
6 Oct 2006 JB 6C35 Turned down both days of this session because of rain. No time charged for 6C35
14 Oct 2006 JB 6C35_01 First observations for 6C35. Short run - Came out of a wind stow at the start. No detections obvious. Excellent weather, 0C, clear. When the run started it was a bit windy still, but no more stows.
15 Oct 2006 JB 6C35_02 8 hours on the survey, no detections. Great weather, started out below 0C in the early morning. Tsys < 40K. No unusual problems to report.
24 Oct 2006 JB 6C35_06 Focus was off by 1cm for scans 93-97.
30 Oct 2006 JB 6C35_07 Short run (1.5h) started about 0.5h early. Excellent WX: -3C, clear. Tsys ~ 40K. 1 new detection. Lost 0.5h: Scans 27-38 are garbage - problem with the Antenna device not in the scan coordinator.
05 Nov 2006 JB 6C35_xx Late start (7:45AM) because of a power supply problem on the feed arm.
14 Nov 2006 JB 6C35_15 Peaks for scans 71-75 show very large offset, ~ 21", making the results for the preceding 1-2 galaxies suspect. The suspect galaxies are 135713+115950 and 133125+110218. Might wish to repeat these observations. Otherwise, smooth observing.
05 Dec 2006 JB 6C35_20 Scan 17 had a strange error, the GO FITS file evidently did not get written properly. That source will not be marked as done. Postscript: The GO FITS file was corrected (it was written with the wrong filename) and the data have been refilled, and the affected source was not detected.
12 Dec 2006 JB 6C35_21 Rough start. The IF rack was showing errors, finally resolved after ~ 45m lost. Ran a test on N3079 to ensure all is ok. Tsys ~45K higher than expected for the cold (-4C) WX
20 Mar 2007 JB 7A34_03 Decent weather, clear, 5C; Accidentally started a second session after scan 17, so session 04 is a continuation. The break happened in the middle of observing IC485. The data for IC485 should be combined.
23 Jan 2008 JB 7A34_19 Excellent WX, First couple of hours I did SDSS sources, then I observed 3 sources from the BAT sample for 15m each. No detections.
2 Feb 2008 JB 7A66_16 Excellent weather, -6C and calm wind, clear sky. The spectrometer was configured in a bad state to start, and scans 6-8 contain bad data. I reobserved the affected sources. Observed several "snapshot" sources to start, then got a spectrum of NGC 2410 and moved on to SDSS sources. No new detections.
19 Feb 2008 JB 7A66_23 Excellent WX, Tsys ~ 34K. Spectrometer problem at startup, so scans 6-10 are junk. I asked operator to reboot the spectrometer and that fixed the problem. LST not appropriate for remaining SDSS sources so I observed snap.cat sources for two hours (5m integrations) then obtained a spectrum (~45m) on NGC 4293.
24 Apr 2008 JB 7A66_40 Took over for Avanti about 7am. We got enough time on NGC 6323 so I tried to pursue survey sources. Found I couldn't peak/focus at low elv because of low-lying fog. The only known maser at high elv was N6946 so I observed that for about 45m at the end of the run, then found one other galaxy nearby, at high elv, for survey.
14 Oct 2008 JB 7A66_46 Mediocre weather, Tsys ~ 50K. Got ~ 90m each on NGC 2273, Mrk 1419, NGC 1194. Systemic features on N2273 are up to 100 mJy!
3 Jan 2008 JB 7A66_66 Weather OK. Unexpected time -- Jules contacted me to use this time to fill in for a no-show observer. First 1.5 hours lost because of a failure in the Az wrap hardware.
30 Jan 2008 JB/AT 7A66_13 Mostly good weather, telescope entered low temperature mode around 1:30 am. Monitoring observations of 4 sources (~30 min), UGC 3789 (3 hrs), Mrk 1491 (3 hrs) and J0912+2304 (1hr). 9 sources surveyed for 10 minutes each, new detection in 111700+323551.
28 Feb 2008 JB/AT 7A66_24 Monitoring, J0214-0016, J0011-0054, UGC3789, NGC2273: ~6hr total. Mrk 1419 (2hrs), J1109+2837 (30 min).
2 Jan 2008 JB/IZ 7A66_08/09 Jim observed 00:00 - 06:00 then Ingyin took over until 09:00. WX: light snow, 14F, breezy but no wind alarms, excellent opacity and Tsys. Found 1 new system, maybe a second. Observation of NGC 1194 at high resolution to measure line width of 0.7 Jy flaring feature.
29 Oct 2007 JB/JC 7A66 Excellent WX. Monitoring run was split into 3 sessions.
18 Oct 2006 JB/LG 6C35_03 FEM model was mistakenly off for first 4 sources, but the impact on Ap_eff is minimal because of the elevations being observed. FEM was on starting with scan 30. The last nod pair ended up in a different session, so session AGBT06C_035_03 contains most of the data but session 04 contains the last nod pair. That last nod pair was an additional 5 minute integration on the last source, to fill in the remaining time. WX was warm but clear, Tsys ~ 60K.
18 Oct 2006 JB/LG 6C35_04 This data set created unintentionally, contains no meaningful data
21 Oct 2006 LG 6C35_05 tbd
-- JimBraatz - 05 Oct 2006
Topic revision: r42 - 2009-01-05, JimBraatz
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