Engineering 2010Oct

See last set of notes from Engineering 2010July-Aug

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2010 October 2:

fb: realigned champ optics and started working on fringe-jumping and coherent integration for cophasing.

2010 October 3:

fb: did a first alignment using the IR array but mostly worked on improving the software.

2010 October 4:

fb and sk

morning -- checking the alignment, CHAMP fully aligned at noon

afternoon -- trying to debug the Zaber mount repeatability problem

2010 October 5:

fb and sk

morning -- redo alignment on E1S1; problems finding pyramid center (it helps to turn on the incandescent lights); fix problems with Zaber mount motors by increasing sleeptime from 3s to 10s

afternoon -- small updates to champGui; searching for beams on wide-field image; 3-4 beams found but problems to align them

evening -- redo alignment on W1W2; found internal WL fringes on R2 using W1-W2 (Beam 1-2) at +3.95mm (see image)

2010 October 6:

fb, sk, and rmg

morning -- discuss with rafael alignment procedure

afternoon -- readjusting pyramid position to avoid bad pixels in the Q1 quadrant; new pyramid center at x=23, y=8; use for IRCam following offsets: row=5, col=20

evening -- discussing alignment tool; add functionality to Pixel_Pico.py to adjust the sign of the motion (done, but still have to determine the values)

2010 October 7:

fb, sk, and rmg

Config: S1 E1 W1 W2 then later S2 E1 W1 W2

The first goal of the night was mainly to adjust the internal delays between MIRC and CHAMP, taking care of limiting vignetting within MIRC. The "good" positions of MIRC ealing mounts were defined as the ones adopted during the last MIRC/PAVO run, where MIRC and PAVO were cophased. For each baseline the Newport RETRO cube will be moved to find fringes on MIRC, and the CHAMP Zaber mounts moved until we get fringes on CHAMP. This method is not failproof as we need enough range on CHAMP Zaber mounts to cophase MIRC and CHAMP. As the RETRO cubes were initially on W1W2, we started by B3-B4, then tried B2-B3 and B1-B2.

Initial tries:

Fringe found on CHAMP for B3-B4

CHAMP-IR4: 196500

CHAMP-IR3: 182150

MIRC-IR3=66000 (good position),

MIRC-IR4=71615 (moved 2mm from the good position 51615 as there was not enough range on CHAMP-IR4 to find fringe)

Fringe found on CHAMP for B2-B3

CHAMP-IR3: 182150

CHAMP-IR2: 175000 ("good")

MIRC-IR2: 80449 ("good")

MIRC-IR3: 66000 ("good")

Could not find the fringe on CHAMP for B1-B2

MIRC-IR2: 80449

MIRC-IR1: 40350 (moved +/-2mm from good position)

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LT 00:28 (37 And), found B3-B4 fringes on CHAMP.

Note: over time CHAMP-IR3 position moved from 179850 to 180250 (but initially found at 182150).

LT 03:18 found B2-B3 fringes on CHAMP but position moves rapidly from 182350

LT 03:30 MIRC sees all fringes, but CHAMP cannot find them using the previously determined offsets. We try to search around but quickly realize that the FT buttons on OPLE were green (FT inactive) so OPLE was not receiving offsets. This is probably due to an early reboot of OPLE during the night.

LT 04:30 found B2-B3 fringes with CHAMP-IR3: 182300, no B3-B4 fringe. We went to the lab to check again that CHAMP-IR1/IR2/IR3/IR4 Zaber mounts were moving reliably. Made various tests, Zaber mounts reproduce reliably.

LT 04:45 found B3-B4 fringes with CHAMP-IR3: 182300, CHAMP-IR4: 208350, MIRC-IR4: 71615. Attempted to record cophased data with fringes "LOCK" (ftdata_400153) and "OFF" (ftdata_401959), however MIRC was locking, not CHAMP. Despite now having the FT toggles set up ok on OPLE, it does not appear than we can paddle the fringes away (tried 1-300 microns in range) ? (not sure)

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Identified bugs:

champGui: scaling of Amp-vs-OPD plot in bottom panel sometimes strange (FIXED on 2010Oct08)

champGui: delay line offsets do not update (FIXED on 2010Oct08)

astropci: negative values in Amp-vs-OPD

champGui/astropci: properly identify the panels with certain beam/telescope combinations

2010 October 8:

fb, sk, and rmg

Config: S1 E1 W1 W2 (B1-B2-B3-B4)

LT 15:00 doing alignment

LT 17:00 setting up MIRC in order to co-phase MIRC and CHAMP. For this, we start with the MIRC-IR-offsets from last night and then get fringes with MIRC by moving the RETROs. Then, we adjust the CHAMP-IR-Zaber mounts in order to find fringes with CHAMP.

LT 18:30 searching for fringes at B3-B4 using MIRC-IR3=66000, MIRC-IR4= 71615 (were we found it yesterday), cannot find fringes with CHAMP

LT 19:00 searching for fringes at B3-B4 using MIRC-IR3=66000, MIRC-IR4=80000, cannot find fringes with CHAMP

LT 19:30 searching for fringes at B2-B3 using MIRC-IR2=80449, MIRC-IR3=66000, found fringes at CHAMP-IR2: 175000 ("good"), CHAMP-IR3: 182100; after finding the fringes we homes CHAMP-IR2 and CHAMP-IR3 and they could recover the position very accurately (hitting precisely the center of the fringe); so these Zaber mounts seem to be OK

LT 19:45 searching for fringes at B1-B2, but without success; then we have to fix hardrive-problem with mirkwood

LT 21:25 have to reboot OPLE and other computers

LT 23:00 (37 And) finding fringes on B2-B3 using MIRC-IR2=80449, MIRC-IR3=66000, CHAMP-IR2=75000, CHAMP-IR3=81600

LT 23:15 searching fringes on B1-B2 in range CHAMP-IR1=60000-105000, no fringes found

LT 23:30 trying to cophase, but CHAMP moves the fringes further away

LT 00:00 trying to search, but CHAMP moves over the fringes

LT 01:20 (Ups And) W2 is not working at elevation of 81 deg, therefore only 3 baselines and low visibility; it seems that we found fringes on B1-B2 and B2-B3 (CHAMP-IR1=105200, CHAMP-IR2=74950, CHAMP-IR3=81600), but this must be fake oscillation since we are out of delay for B2; the oscillation appears only strongly in individual beams; the oscillation does not seem to be caused by the delay line carts; the oscillation appears only on L2 and R2 channel, therefore, it does not seem to be introduced by Beam2, but from an component inside of CHAMP.

LT 02:20 (Lambda Tau) seeing is very poor

LT 03:30 went to the lab to find cause of vibration in L2 and R2 channel, without success.

LT 05:25 (Zeta Gem) finding fringes on B3-B4 using MIRC-IR3=66000, MIRC-IR4=80000, CHAMP-IR3=81600, CHAMP-IR4=109300 (that's the baseline which is not affected by vibration). Attempting search (works, found the fringes). Phase-lock does not seem to freeze the fringes though. Trying several gains 0.1, 0.2, 0.05, and -0.1 but lost B3 due to elevation being now very high.

LT 06:10 John suggests that the vibration might be due to tip-tilt system (moving too fast)

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Identified bugs:

astropci: the command "SR" does not work to transfer BC offsets (IMPORTANT TO FIX)