Observing With RTS2
Updated as of June 2020
Note this page is in the process of being updated and simplified. A version of this simplified instruction manual can be found here, and is being actively edited: Google docs link
Please try to have the setup process done roughly 40 min before the start of twilight so that flat fields can potentially be taken. RTS2 will try to start twilight flats when the sun is a few degrees below the horizon, so a few minutes after sunset.
The start of the night is slightly different now. Fill the dewar, of course. At the beginning of the night, make sure to recenter the dome using the box on the south wall. The only thing you need to manually open is the wind screen, as the dome and mirror cover are now opened on the 'start everything button' which we will describe below.
On gerard, if it is logged in as Kuiper 61" Observer, log out. Log in as user rts2obs using the same password.
On AZCAM computer (bigccd), double click StartMont4K icon, and then select configuration number 2 -- this is the special RTS2 instance of Azcam and please only use this. Check the Instrument tab, and make sure the 'Enable Instrument' button is clicked. Also, under Telescope, 'Enable Telescope'. It is essential to do this before starting RTS2. Clicking the Enable Instrument and Telescope buttons tells AzCam to write important keywords (filter, telescope RA/Dec, etc) into the image header. To put in the header keywords appropriate for RTS2, click on the 'Preferences' button and go to the bottom of the newly opened GUI. Set the image header file to 'FitsTemplate_mont4k_rts2.txt'. This will be very necessary on the first night of an ARTN run.
On gerard, simply click on the 'Start Everything' button. A bunch of windows will pop up including the RTS2 home page in the web browser. The web browser takes a couple of minutes to come online. Log into the RTS2 HOME page with the username/password provided. The RTS2 home page may at first say it cannot connect. Wait a few seconds and hit refresh on the web browser.
Another window that pops up is a window with Big buttons that say Cancel and Start/End Night. There are also 'Open Mirror Cover' and 'Open Dome' buttons. You will use the Start/End of Night button to enable the telescope and also turn Auto Dome ON and initialize the dome. First, open the dome with the appropriate button, and then the mirror cover. Then hit the 'Init Dome' button (this initializes the dome position that you tweaked upstairs). Then hit Start Night, which takes care of all other telescope and autodome tasks. Conversely, the End of Night button will turn Auto Dome off, stow the telescope and will disable the telescope (completing all these tasks will take a while). Also push the Close Mirror Cover and Close Dome buttons at the end of the night.
Start the RTS2 system by going to the RTS2 web app and clicking on the 'Hard Off' button and choosing 'on' on the pull down. If you have gotten started before twilight, everything should work -- biases should start about 10 minutes before evening flats
A decent value to assert at the beginning of the night is 2400. You can adjust focus on the RTS2 home page by entering the desired value in the box next to the "Focus Pos" label.
We use the script developed by T. E. Pickering. It uses one or more images that are far enough out of focus for stars to clearly be donut-shaped. Note, you cannot run the focus script until the ON dusk button changes to ON night. If you run the process below before then, RTS2 will not let it happen, and it will do flats plus darks instead.
To use Pickering's script click on the TCS GUI link at the bottom left of the web app. This will open the web based TCS GUI. On the bottom left of this GUI click the on button. You can now enter coordinates by hand. You need to find a field with enough stars in it for the script to work (look here: Standard stars). I find that a field just outside the Milky Way works best. To enter coordinates in the TCS GUI type the RA and Dec in the section labeled "TCS Equatorial Request (Next Position)" then hit enter. You will notice that the next position at the top changes. Then click on the Move Next W/ PEC button in the box on the right. The telescope should start to move. Once the Telescope has arrived take a test image by clicking on the Test Image button on the rts2 web app. If there are sufficient stars (> 10), click the Focus Run button.
This will take two exposures on both sides of the focus, compute the focus using the Pickering algorithm, and then assert the new focus value. We recommend taking a 'test image' using the button on the RTS2 status page to check the focus. Then you are done. Nice focus!
Phil Daly has now developed the ARTN Observer Request Portal (AORP).
The easiest thing to do is to go there and register an account. From there, one can put objects directly in the queue via a web form, or by using a file upload. Here is an example of a viable file upload for the current version of AORP: here.
Now, as the observer, it is your job to take things from AORP, and send them to the queue. Bring up the AORP web site and login as an administrator. The username and password are on the white board in red marker. Once logged in, click on 'View Observable Request(s)'. If you are in a pinch, go to 'View All Requests'. This will display all of the available requests. Click on the eye to put things in the queue.
Note that if you restart RTS2 to get out of a bad state, you will likely have to reset some variables. If you do a Hard Off and then On from the webpage, you may need to click the After Flats Settings button on the webpage against. If you stop and restart the RTS2 service, you will have to click After Flats, and you also need to reset the focus (F0 > FOC_TAR) to your preferred value.
What if the ds9 image viewer does not appear during initial dark frames at beginning of night?
Answer: For now this is normal. Ds9 should start popping up once flats and then science objects get taken.
If your images are coming back with just '512' pixel values: First hit the On button in the RTS2 Home page and go to off. Wait for the exposure to finish. And then go over to the AzCam window and hit the Reset button along the left column. Go back to RTS2 and hit On again and you should be good to go.
Once you are done observing, go to the big Start/Stop button. Click on 'End of Night', and wait until the telescope has stowed, etc. Then go to the RTS2 web page and switch from the 'On' to 'Off' state. Close the mirror cover then dome with the buttons on the 'End of Night' button. Then you should be done. Go upstairs and close the mirror cover like a normal night. Fill the dewar, etc. If it is the last night of ARTN observing, log out of the gerard computer.
- If you don't already have rts2 running from evening calibrations: F9 to top menu, move over to States, select On, answer Yes to question. This will move the telescope!
If you leave rts2-mon on the EXEC page it will show the current and next target queue_id and name (eg 1026 and sn2017gup), and the observation start time and how long it has been on the target. This is nice for seeing what it is doing and where it will go next.
If it slews to a target but AzCam doesn't start taking exposures, there is a failure to communicate with the camera. To cure this:
- quit rts2-mon: F9 to top menu, System > Exit
- service rts2 status
- look for the PID of the rts2-camd-azcam3 process. If it's not there, find it with
- ps aux | grep azcam on bigpop,
- sudo kill -9
-
sudo rts2-camd-azcam3 -i -a 10.30.1.10:2402 -n 10.30.1.2 --wheeldev W0 --focdev F0 --debug(this is in ~rts2obs/resetcam, you don't have permission to sudo that script, but you can copy/paste from it) - start rts2-mon again and restart the queue.
The object that was at top of queue may disappear - RTS2 may have removed it from the queue once it slews to it and makes it current. You can add it back with:
- rts2-queue --queue plan <queue_id>
If things get more wedged, or BIG61 gets hung, you can restart everything with:
sudo service rts2 start
Then restart rts2-mon. You may then need to check and reset queue_only = true, auto_loop = false, default_auto_loop = false.
Data files seem to be winding up on gerard in ~bigobs/data with a filename based on yyyymmdd, UT, and queue-id. Unfortunately the name in the FITS header is not populated with the target name. I don't know how to specify the data destination.
plan_queing WESTEAST seemed to work mostly as expected; I'm not 100% sure that
it always observed in strict RA order, but its order was fairly sensible.
It does understand the telescope limits. When there are objects in the queue that
appear to be skipped or sent to the end of the queue, it may be because of limits.
We had it remove objects when done, so if you run out of objects it will wind up
at the eastmost one, even if low, and may repeat it or hang out, rather than
doing something like repeating objects that are higher up.
If you want to interrupt an object and skip to the next object, e.g. there is a problem, or the object is getting to too large airmass, etc, you can use rts2-mon > F9 > States > Off to turn rts2 off, and then turn it back on again. It will go to the object at the top of the queue, which is the next object. "
If you turn rts2-mon off (hit F9, select States > OFF in top menu) at morning twilight, that will prevent it from taking morning flats.
rts2-queue --queue plan --clear
in rts2-mon, States > Off, answer yes
in rts2-mon, System > Exit
sudo service rts2 stop
While in rts2-mon, you can select the BIG61 pane and type "park" to
stow the telescope and dome. Or you can quit and stop RTS2 and
stow them from the INDI panel.
Finally, disable the telescope from the INDI panel.
Make sure you quit RTS2 (use the Kill RTS2 button) and disable the telescope so there's no chance
of it waking up and moving things! Make sure to follow the `End of Night' procedure here.
At the end of the RTS2 run we need to log off the rts2obs account on gerrard and restart bigpop. To restart bigpop simply go to the web page here and click the button.
You can define a new target with rts2-newtarget (see below for syntax). Then, the observing script for a target can be defined by editing a JSON file. See Observing script definitions
You can manually add a target by running these commands. See the make_newobs.py script for how to make a table of targets and desired exposures, and run that script to add them all. That script is at https://github.com/bjweiner/ARTN/blob/master/scripts/make_newobs.py
rts2-newtarget
; [type stuff including RA, Dec, name, id]
rts-target -c <camera> -s "your script here" <queue_id>
; [to make an observing script for an existing target]
rts2-queue --queue plan <queue_id>
; [to add the target to queue named "plan"]
Example: How to add a standard star to the queue:
rts2-newtarget ; [interactive, I didn't figure out the command line yet]
00:54:34 +00:41:05 ; [RA Dec]
s ; [save]
1100 ; [queue id]
Landolt_92_249 ; [name]
rts2-target -c C0 -s "BIG61.OFFS=(1m,0) filter=2 E 20 filter=2 E 20 filter=3 E 10 filter=3 E 10 filter=1 E 5 filter=1 E 5 filter=4 E 10 filter=4 E 10 filter=0 E 60 filter=0 E 60" 1100
(this order was BVRIU, I think)
Can also try adding moon distance and airmass constraints (this was untested, now believe it works):
rts2-target -c C0 --lunarDistance 20: --airmass :2.2 -s "BIG61.OFFS=(1m,0) filter=2 E 20 filter=2 E 20 filter=3 E 10 filter=3 E 10 filter=1 E 5 filter=1 E 5 filter=4 E 10 filter=4 E 10 filter=0 E 60 filter=0 E 60" 1100
Add target to queue:
rts2-queue --queue plan 1100
RTS2 will stick it into the queue according to the order option you have in plan_queing.