MagLiteS Observing Documentation

Introduction

Welcome to the observing documentation for the Magellanic Satellites Survey (MagLiteS).

Setup

To setup the MagLiteS observing tools, source the setup script:

ssh -X observer2
cd /user/DECamObserver/kadrlica/maglites
source setup

This script should work with either bash (my favorite) or tcsh (default on observer2). If the script works, you should see '(maglites)' prepended to your prompt.

Scheduling

You can schedule a full night using the 'schedule_night' tool:

schedule_night --help
schedule_night -n 20170221 --mode good

This should create a directory called '20170221', containing a set of json files in chunks of 60 minutes. Once you have generated a set of json scripts, you can plot the results with the plot_json script:

plot_json 20170221/*.json

To reschedule a specific chunk of exposures, you can use the schedule_chunk script:

schedule_chunk --help
schedule_chunk --utc "2017/02/22 06:00:00" --mode good

This should produce a single json script spanning 1 hour starting at 2017/02/22 06:00:00. Again, you can plot the results of this script using plot_json:

plot_json 20170222_06:00:00.json

When obztak schedules a chunk of exposures it checks the SISPI database to see what fields have already been observed. However, it does not have access to fields that are loaded on the SISPI queue but have not been observed yet. To tell obztak to avoid scheduling exposures from a previous chunk, you can pass that chunk into schedule_chunk:

schedule_chunk --utc "2017/02/22 06:00:00" --mode good -c "20170221/20170222_05:07:33.json"

Here I have told obztak to avoid all fields that are in the 20170208_05:07:33.json file. Plot the output of the new file 20170208_06:00:00.json and see how it differs from the first time we generated the chunk.

plot_json 20170222_06:00:00.json

Scheduling Modes

MagLiteS scheduling allows some user input on the observing conditions. The --mode option controls the range of airmasses that the tactician will use to select fields. If the conditions are good (FWHM <= 1", clear, etc.) then use --mode good. This will allow the tactician to select from all fields in the survey. However, if the conditions are poor (FWHM ~ 1.5", cloudy, etc.) you may want to use the --mode poor to restrict the tactician to scheduling fields with airmass < 1.5. Note that MagLiteS is at high airmass, and we would like to take advantage of good weather to do high airmass fields. A summary of the 'mode' options can be found below.

mode	airmass min	airmass max
great	1.6	2.0 (and DEC < -80)
good	0.0	2.0
fine	0.0	1.9
ok	0.0	1.6
poor	0.0	1.5
bad	0.0	1.4

Observing

Once you are satisfied with the quality of the scheduling scripts, move them into the directory labeled scripts/survey. Try to organize the final scripts that you use into directories labeled by night. For example, I put the scripts that I planned to execute on 20170221 into scripts/20170221. Since I am paranoid, also write protect the scripts after I move them:

mv 20170221 scripts/survey/
chmod a-w scripts/survey/20170221

To load a script into SISPI:

1. Click "Load Exposure Script"
2. Select "Choose File"
3. Navigate to the directory /usr/remote/user/DECamObserver/ExposureScripts/User_scripts/2016A-0366
4. Double click on the night and script that you want to load.

You can keep any notes about observations under the 'notes' directory.

Last Resort

If all else fails for some reason, there are a set of nightly backup scripts located in:

ls /user/DECamObserver/kadrlica/maglites/scripts/backup
20170221  20170222  20170223  20170618  20170619  20170620

If something goes wrong with the scheduling, you can use these scripts as a last resort.