HET End-Trimester Report
Second Period of 2004
April 1 - July 31

This report is composed of five sections:
Facility Status

In this section we will discuss the status of the HET facility and each instrument and any limitation to configurations that occurred during the period.

  • Tracker: The hexapods have has had 38 failures during trajectories for a total amount of time lost of 5 hours. This limited our abilities to do planet search programs and long difficult setup trajectories. This problem turned out to be a overheating of the amplifiers because the cooling fans had burned out. The problem has been fixed and not reocurred. On May 25th we had a failure of the X slew motor system which shut us down for the entire night. The system was rebuilt the following day and we were ready to observe the following night.

  • LRS: LRS was run with G2 for the first days of the period; we will likely switch to G3 at the near the beginning of June. During one night the LRS was not available due to a crash of the ICE system.

  • SAMS and MARS: SAMS and MARS were run during the entire period. SAMS has had trouble with the insulated truss at the beginning of the night. Considerable engineering effort is being put into compensating for this problem.

  • HRS: The HRS lost cryogentics 4 nights during this first month of the period. On April 27 the cryotiger was recharged and flushed; we hope this will solve this nagging problem. Due to some computer equipment problems we were unable to use the Apogee to setup on targets during one week; we reverted to using the HRS PMT to setup on targets. The HRS computer and cryotiger had some significant reset problems during our stint of strong storms. The APC UPS was found to have been burned out and we ran off raw power for 4 days until a new APC arrived. During those 4 days the cryotiger shut during one of our storms. The APC is installed and no further problems have been found.

  • MRS: After a few hours of IC the MRS is now operational for this period and all night staff members are fully trained in its operation. The MRS was down one night due to a communications glitch to the MRS hardware. Due to some computer equipment problems we were unable to use the Apogee to setup on targets during one week; this stopped all MRS science for that week. The MRS XD was adjusted to move Halpha from the order between the CCDs to onto the red CCD. The shutter was also found to be out of alignment and partially blocking some of the order length. Larry is fabricating a new shutter.

  • Instrument Commissioning: During this period there were 3.1 hours of MRS IC and staff training. Some difficulties remain in MRS blind offset setups but some indications that it might be on the PI side.

  • Engineering: There have been 25.7 dedicated hours for Engineering, most of which was Image Quality Engineering.
    Observing Statistics

    NOTE: We are now using FWHM which is measured off both the LRS "pre" images and the FIF bent prime guider.

    The following image quality statistics were taken from the statistics recorded for science operations in the night report.

    For comparison here is the image quality for the same period of 2003

    Here are the DIMM values reported in the night report.

    Month by Month Summary

    The following table gives the observing statistics for each month. The second column gives the fraction of the month that was spent attempting science (as opposed to engineering or instrument commissioning). Science time is defined to begin at 18 degree twilight or the first science target. Science time is defined to end at 18 degree twilight or the last science target. The fourth column gives the fraction of the possible science time (A) lost due to weather. The fifth through tenth columns give how the remaining science time (after removing weather losses) was spent. Please note that the first stack of the night often occurs before 18 degree twilight.

    Month A:Fraction of the Time that was Possible Science B:Average Night Length C:Fraction of Total Science Time Lost due to Weather D:Fraction of Actual Science Time with Shutter Open E:Fraction of Actual Science Time as Overhead F:Fraction of Actual Science Time Lost due to Alignment G:Fraction of Actual Science Time Lost due to Calibrations H:Fraction of Actual Science Time Lost due to Problems I:Fraction of Actual Science Time Not accounted for or Lost
    April 0.926 8.22 0.38 0.44 0.30 0.03 0.08 0.02 0.13
    May 0.917 7.20 0.26 0.50 0.27 0.04 0.04 0.08 0.08
    June 0.935 6.66 0.39 0.49 0.26 0.02 0.05 0.09 0.09
    July 0.979 6.97 0.30 0.53 0.31 0.04 0.01 0.07 0.04

    The last column is new and acounts for all of the lost or not used minutes. Some of this time is accounting errors and some is time not charged to any program due to operations inefficiency.

    Details on Nightly cloud cover based on the TO's observations of the sky reported 3 times a night in the night report.:

    Month Fraction of the Nights that were Clear Fraction of the Nights that were Mostly Clear Fraction of the Nights that were Partly Cloudy Fraction of the Nights that were Mostly Cloudy Fraction of the Nights that were Cloudy
    April 0.50 0.10 0.23 0.10 0.07
    May 0.52 0.10 0.23 0.10 0.07
    June 0.10 0.23 0.23 0.17 0.17
    July 0.19 0.29 0.23 0.13 0.16

    Please note that the HET could be closed due to humidity, smoke or high dust count and still have a "Clear" statistic in the night report.

    The following tables give a break down of all attempted visits as well as the category that each falls into.

    Charged exposures
    Number of TimesShutter Open (Hours)Type
    804136.6 A - Acceptable
    9519.8 B - Acceptable but Border line conditions
    62698.0 4 - Priority 4 visits (does not include 1/2 charge)
    80.2 Q - charged but PI error
    00.0 C - Acceptable by RA but PI rejects

    Uncharged exposures
    Number of TimesShutter Open (Hours)Type
    50.8 I - Targets observed under otherwise idle conditions
    194.3 E - Rejected by RA for Equipment Failure
    305.7 H - Rejected for Human failure
    7912.8 W - Rejected by RA for Weather
    102.1 P - Rejected by PI and confirmed by RA
    30.7 N - Rejected due to unknown cause

    So this is a total of 25.6 hours of uncharged spectra with an additional possible 19.8 hours of spectra that may be rejected.

    The following overhead statistics include slew, setup, readout and refocus between exposures (if there are multiple exposures per visit). In the summary page for each program the average setup time is calculated. The table below gives the average setup time for each instrument PER VISIT and the average and maximum COMPLETED science exposures and visits.

    The "Exposure" is defined by when the CCD opens and closes. A "Visit" is the requested total CCD shutter open time during a track and might be made up of several "Exposures". "Visit" as defined here contains no overhead. To calculate one type of observing efficiency metric one might divide the "Visit" by the sum of "Visit" + "Overhead".

    The average overhead per actual visit is the overhead for each acceptable priority 0-3 (not borderline, and with overheads > 4 minutes to avoid 2nd half of exposures with unrealisticly low overheads) science target. This number reflects how quickly we can move from object to object on average for each instrument, however, this statistic tends to weight the overhead for programs with large number of targets such as planet search programs.

    The average overhead per requested visit is the total charged overhead per requested priority 0-3 visit averaged per program. To get this value we average the average overhead for each program as presented in the program status web pages. The average overhead per visit can be inflated by extra overhead charged for PI mistakes (such as bad finding charts or no targets found at sky detection limits) or for incomplete visits e.g. 2 visits of 1800s are done instead of 1 visit with a CRsplit of 2. The average overhead per visit can be deflated by the 15 minute cap applied to the HRS and MRS. This method tends to weight the overhead to programs with few targets and bad requested visit lengths, ie. very close to the track length.

    Instrument Avg Overhead per Actual Visit(min)Avg Charged Overhead per Requested Visit(min) Avg Exposure (sec)Median Exposure (sec)Max Exposure (sec)Avg Visit (sec)Median Visit (sec)Max Visit (sec)
    LRS 13.2 19.5 638.7 600 2400 1066.0 6006300
    HRS 9.3 10.6 621.5 560 2700 768.16603600
    MRS 10.6 8.6 1056.1 900 1800 1290.212002100

    NOTE: AS OF 2003-3 THE SETUP TIME FOR AN ATTEMPTED MRS OR HRS TARGET IS CAPPED AT 15 MINUTES.

    The overhead statistics can be shortened by multiple setups (each one counted as a separate visit) while on the same target as is the case for planet search programs. The overhead statistics can be lengthened by having multiple tracks that add up to a single htopx visit as can happen for very long tracks where each attempt might only yield a half visit.

    A way to improve the overhead accumulated for programs with long exposure times is to add double the above overhead to the requested visit length and make sure that time is shorter than the actual track length. This avoids the RA having to split requested visits between several different tracks.



    The following is a histogram of the current HET queue visits for the rest of the period. A line has been drawn at the expected number of hour long visits that we hope to achieve in each hour bin.

    The following histogram shows some of the extrema in observing conditions: good seeing dark time, bright time and bad seeing dark time. A line has been drawn at the expected number of hour long visits that we hope to achieve in each hour bin.

    The following histogram shows the bright time priority 0-3 contribution from each partner. The dashed line is a rough estimate of the number of hour long visits one could complete during the remainder of the period.

    The following histogram shows the dark time priority 0-3 contribution from each partner. The dashed line is a rough estimate of the number of hour long visits one could complete during the remainder of the period.

    From the above plots I have determined that:


    Observing Programs Status

    The following links give the summary for each institution and its programs. The resulting table will give (for each program) the total number of targets in the queue and the number completed, the CCD shutter open hours, average overhead for that program, and the TAC allocated time. This usually will be the best metric for judging completeness but there are times when a PI will tell us that a target is "done" before the total number of visits is complete.


    Institution Status

    This is how each institution has allocated its time by priority.

    Time Allocation by Institution (hours)
    Institution Priority 0 Priority 1 Priority 2Priority 3 Priority 4
    PSU 6.000 (3%) 35.170 (18%) 36.830 (19%) 26.450 (14%) 91.200 (47%)
    UT 15.500 (8%) 33.000 (17%) 54.000 (27%) 47.000 (24%) 50.000 (25%)
    Stanford 0.000 5.330 (22%) 10.000 (42%) 0.000 (0%) 8.660(36%)
    Munich 0.000 (0%) 7.000 (100%) 0.000 (0%) 0.000 (0%) 0.000 (0%)
    Goetting 0.000 (0%) 10.000 (50%) 5.870 (30%) 4.000 (20%) 0.000 (0%)
    NOAO 0.000 14.000 (25%) 4.000 (7%) 38.000(68%) 0.000
    SALT 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
    DDT 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000



    The following is a summary of the Acceptable CCD shutter time for each institution based on our night report data base. It does not include any overhead. Priority 4 time is charge at 0.5 of the visits completed.

    CCD shutter Open by Institution (hours)
    -TOTAL- Used % of All
    PSU 93.52 37.0
    UT 123.53 48.8
    Stanford 8.83 3.5
    Munich 13.53 5.3
    Goetting 13.5 5.3
    NOAO 6.20 --
    SALT 0.00 --
    DDT 0.00 --

    The following is a summary of the total charged time for each institution based on our htopx data base (for shutter open) and night reports (for overhead). It includes shutter open time and overhead. Priority 4 time is charged at half its normal rate and without overhead.

    Time Charged by Institution (hours)
    -INST- Used % of All -TOTAL TO DATE- -% TO DATE-
    PSU 99.32 33.1 906.829.6
    UT 140.87 46.9 1723.556.2
    Stanford 15.64 5.2 207.5 6.8
    Munich 22.61 7.5 107.63.5
    Goetting 21.68 7.2 120.53.9
    NOAO N/A -- -- --
    SALT 0.00 -- -- --
    DDT 0.00 -- -- --

    The original "TOTAL TO DATE" was found to be in error on Dec. 11 2003; it did not include the overhead time. The values given here in red are the corrected totals.
    Total to Date starting from Oct 1999.

    TAC Response