Observations

Quality Check SPICA (in progress)

2023

UT 2-6 May (on site, Denis, Juraj, Mathieu, Pierre)

May 1: Interesting engineering tests on E1-AO and different synthetic matrices.
May 2: Fog, rain and humidity. Lot of daytime activity on AO, alignment, dispersion, injection, spectral calibration
May 3: Fog, humidity - no obs. Daytime activities on AO, alignment procedure, and issue probably found for the correction of dispersion.
May 4: 100% humidity, Winter advisory, snow expected. No observations, continuation of daytime activities
May 5: A few inches of snow during the day, fog and humidity. Continuation of daytime activities.
May 6

UT 6-10 April:(engineering, remote Denis&Fred)

On April 6 & 7, CHARA is still closed after the winter break
April 8: clouds for the first half of the time, then S1S2 fringes
April 9: humidity for the first halp of the night then more fringes
April 10: humidity for the first half of the night then alignment, AO, and more fringes

UT 1-5 March: On site operation (Denis, Pierre, Daniel) but observatory closed because of snow storm

2022

UT 1-5 December: Remote operations but no on-sky fringes because of poor weather

UT 4-8 November: Remote operations (Cyril, Sylvain, Fred, Nicolas, Denis + Julien)

Engineering activities on LDC/VLDC/DDL - Offsets on sky - Fringe tracking

W2W1 fringes seen on the spicaRTD after stretching but still with some dispersion: IMG_2724.MOV

UT 4-11 October: onsite operations (Pierre, Julien, Denis)

More engineering activities on LDC/VLDC/DDL - Offsets on sky - AO & Fringe tracking - First set of initial data

S1S2 fringes on gam Cas as seen on the RTD (dispersion not completely compensated) IMG_2691.MOV

UT 12-19 August: Remote from Calern

Engineering activities on dispersion, baseline solution, and operations.

UT 8-12 July 2022: Remote from Calern

UT 21-25 June 2022: Mt Wilson (Denis, Fred, Julien)

25 June 2022: Commissioning, MLDC only
- Fringes S1S2 obtained on different stars, always the same offset (==> beam samplers different from STS)
- Fringes W1W2 on HD177724 at +3850µm on W1. Again a BS/STS issue.
- New TELAO telemetries under very good r0 conditions (18cm)
24 June 2022: Commissioning, but poor seeing
- New records of control and science data for tests of injection
- Hard time to find fringes because of a bad settings of the MLDC+VLDC
- New record of TELAO telemetries
23 June 2022: Array closed following the power outage
22 June 2022: High winds, thunderstorms
21 June 2022: Commissioning (first 2T fringes)
- S1S2 fringes found on Eta Uma, MR720 and LR - Important dispersion
- Recording of Control and Science data
- Recording of sequence of injection (control and science)
- Recording of HD148857 (binary with separation 1.3'') for field characterization
- TELAO telemetries recorded
- Control data recorded with different settings of LABAO focus on S1/B5

UT 27-31 May 2022: Nice&Calern (Sylvain, Cyril, Philippe, Fred, Denis)

UT 23-27 April 2022: Mt Wilson (David, Denis, Fred)

27 April 2022: clouds and poor seeing.
26 April 2022: medium conditions. Tests of injection
25 April 2022: good conditions. Validation of the FTT and fiberexplorer but still low ejection level. Tests of refraction.
24 April 2022: very bad seeing, tests of alignment procedures
23 April 2022: clouds and hgh humidity

UT 28 Mars to 31 March 2022: Calern (Denis, Fred, Philippe, Sylvain)

31 March 2022: poor seeing, high humidity. Continuation of software activities and SPICA-FT closed loop.
30 MArch 2022: high humidity, no observations
29 March 2022: bad weather, no observations
28 March 2022: bad weather, no observations

UT 10-12 March 2022: Mt Wilson (Cyril, Daniel, Denis, Julien, Philippe, Pierre)

12 March 2022: tests of AO tuning and fiber injection.
11 March 2022: poor seeing and winds, no observations
10 March 2022: (First stellar light) alignment on sky; very poor seeing. Issues for injection and fringes.