Hamilton Setup

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Lick Planet Search - Hamilton setup
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Fischer, version: 21 Jan 2009
Updated by Julien Spronck in August 2009
Updated by Kelsey Clubb on 23 Dec 2010

- Fill the dewar every afternoon

Setting up the Hamilton
Camera room (four things)
1) open echelle grating
2) open collimator – put in mask
3) open cross-disperser (slide out front and lift side panels)
4) fill the dewar
Is the CCD controller temp correct? (-120 for dewar 8, -116 for dewar 6)

Slit room
1) Check I2-cell orientation on first night with laser
2) Fan on medium, drawing air

Set up computers
Select "Remote Observation Startup for Hamilton" from pull-down Hamilton menu
Type 'yes' in the xterm that appears asking to confirm the start of all Hamilton GUIs
The following windows should appear (if not, select them individually from pull-down menu):
1) Data Taker
2) Hamilton Motor Controller
3) Showmidpt (can no longer rely on showmidpt2 for setting an exposure to end after a specific number of counts have been collected)
4) Slitroom_fe
5) Event sounds
6) Coords
7) Telcoc
8) Guider

NOTE: The previous controller, Hamit, has been decommissioned in favor of a more user-friendly GUI.

To change the setup, click on the box with the letters/numbers to get a pull down menu (not the
downward arrow/check mark). The downward arrow/check mark gives more detailed options for
making changes. Also note that when you change something such as a filter from open to bg12, for
example, the box will turn yellow and you must click the right arrow that appears to the right of the
yellow box or else the change will not take place!

Warm-up Iodine Cell
No longer done manually from slit room!
From the Hamilton motor control GUI, choose "On" from the "Power:" pull-down options (If this fails, open an xterm and type: modify -s hammotor omegapower=on)
After a few minutes or so, the setpoint should reflect 50.0 (degrees C) and it takes 20 minutes to fully warm-up

Logsheet
Open an xterm window on catpc. Type 'logsheets' to get to the logsheets directory (/local/u/user/planets/logsheets). Copy last logsheet to current one and edit.

Data Taker Window
2nd Level Tab, verify and/or change the following:

Focus
1) Hamilton motor control GUI:

2) Data-taking window:

3) Data Taker Control window:

NOTE: Click on the downward arrow/check mark to get a new window that allows you to change the position of the grating/height/focus.
You would type your desired move (in stepper counts) in the "relative move:" box

4) In /local/u/user/observers/lowe/Hamilton on catpc, run foc.pro:

not

NOTE: Previous grating/height/ccd focus settings are now meaningless (such as never going below 500,000 for CCD focus position)

5) Update the logsheet with current CCD Focus, Grating, Height settings.

Wideflats
Take test exposures with the BG12 filter until you find an exposure time that results in ~17,000 peak counts for a column cut of column 1000. Repeat for BG13.
1) Hamilton motor control GUI:

2) Data-taking window:

see note above, but a starting point would be 7 seconds for BG12 and 1.5 seconds for BG13

3) Make sure there are no I2 lines in the data taker images! Iodine Cell Position should be "Out" on GUI
4) Once you have the desired exposure times for each filter:

Iodine
1) Insert I2 cell by choosing Position: "In" on Hamilton motor control GUI

(or, in the slitroom_fe window, pull down “function” window and insert I2 cell)

2) Hamilton motor control GUI:

3) Data-taking window:

NOTE: The Iodine exposure has two steps since only one filter can be in at a time.
Choose BG12. Enter an exposure time of 4 seconds as a first guess. Start the exposure. After ~2.5 seconds or so, PAUSE the exposure. Switch to the BG13 filter and resume the exposure.
Repeat varying the total exposure time and the individual exposure times per filter until a column cut of column 1000 results in peaks ranging between ~5,000-10,000dn

4) Check the spectrum – I2 lines present? 20-30% deep?

ThAr
1) Hamilton motor control GUI:

2) Data-taking window:

Observing
1) In slit room: Turn on photon integrator: flip 2 switches, dial to 705 V, pull plunger (Also, remove polar axis plug if on 3m)
2) On gouda: be sure you have “coords” window up and read in observing script (note: “yes” enable POCO on gouda)

gouda

shard

3) Be sure “showmidpt” program is up and running

CAT

4) Update exposure times and object names in data-taker
5) Update logsheets (spaces, no tabs in logsheet)

End of the night
1) If no Bstar observed at the beginning of the night, observe one now

CAT

2) In slit room: Turn off photon integrator: push in plunger, dial down voltage, flip two switches (Also, put polar axis plug back in if on 3m)
3) Take one I2 observation
4) Take one ThAr observation
5) Take a second set of wide flats
6) Check (and fix) logsheets

on catpc, in /local/u/user/planets/logsheets: idl> kclogchecker Advanced observers:

7) go to sleep!
Advanced observers:

e) run raw reduction script after waking up
End of the run
1) In the slit room: turn off fan
2) Close up the optics in the camera room
3) Turn off power to Iodine cell temperature controller via the Hamilton motor control GUI (If this fails, open an xterm and type: modify -s hammotor omegapower=off)
4) Have all data been ftp’d to SFSU? All logsheets?
Advanced observers: