This is a summary of normal IGRINS use for observers at DCT

Before You Begin:

Check IGRINS is healthy, verify with your TO.

Observing timelines:

First half of the night:

1 hour before sunset: Follow Start of Night, then take calibrations.
20 minutes past sunset, your TO will open, do wavefront tests, and perform a nightly pointing check. This should take 20-30 minutes.
40 minutes after sunset, your IGRINS on-sky time begins (nightly observing procedures).
5 minutes before your time is up, begin the End of Night procedure.

The order of operations should be tests, darks, flat offs, flat ons, opening and TO checks, science.

Second half of the night:

Begin with Start of Night, then begin your IGRINS on-sky time (nightly observing procedures). You can observe 30 minutes until sunrise.
20 minutes after sunrise, your TO will close, during which they will move the telescope to zenith. Then, you will take calibrations (about 1 hour).
80 minutes after sunrise, your TO can shut down the telescope.
Then, follow the End of Night procedure.

The order of operations should be test, science, flat offs, flats ons (this order is necessary to reduce persistence from the flat lamps on the calibrations). Darks are not needed.

Full night:

Follow the first half of the night timeline (calibrations are only needed at the start of the night).

Start of Night:

1. Wake up ICC on the right (a big iMac) and close these windows (HKP, DTP, SCP, QLP, IGRINS Hub) on the Desktop if they happen to be open. HKP and the IGRINS Hub should have been open, make sure to close them now. Do not touch any terminals that have tmp350.py, sh_to web.sh, and test_mnt running, just in case they happen to be visible - these will often be running on a different Desktop window so you do not see them. As such, your work should be be limited to Desktop 1 and 3.

2. Turn on the IG proxy by clicking the icon on the top right corner of the iMac desktop.

3. Turn on the IG software (HKP house keeping package, SCP slitview camera, DTP data taking package) by opening a new terminal and typing:

> cd ~/igrins_admin
>sh run_icshub.sh
When it launches, the "IGRINS Hub" window will pop up.

You should see the "check Mount" and "check Proxy" change from "..." to "Okay" status.

Start the HKP (click "run HKP"). In the HKP gui, click the “periodic monitoring” and, below that, the “Send Alert (T>20)” buttons.

Once you see that the HKP status says "connected" in the Hub, start the SCP (click "run SCP"). You should see the SCP window pop open.

Once you see that the SCP status says "connected" in the Hub, start the DTP (click "run DTP"). You should see the DTP window pop open.

4. Check the software

In the SCV, check if you are receiving the TCS information or not (blue values on the upper right, including RA, Dec).

Note - TCS will not be running without your TO. Images and cals can still be taken but headers will be incomplete.

In the Status box, the following lines (for the SVC, and then for both H and K in the DTP) should appear:

5. Test Exposures

Change the observer name to your Last Name. No single quotes or special characters. Commas are ok.

Change the object name to 'test'.

Take a test image on both SVC and with the HK detectors to test readout.

If you see noise pattern or low-resolution image, repeat the short exposures or contact observing support.

Calibrations:

The recommended calibrations are listed in the following table, and the procedure below.

Note - if TCS is not running (run by TO), the header information will not be complete. There will be error messages about the missing header information if exposures are saved, but that can be ignored.

*UPDATED SEP 2017 - Use the two 600 W flat lamps turned all the way up. Do not use the LMI lamps because they are likely to fault and give inconsistent flux.

You should get 10,000 counts in the H band and 8,000 in the K band. You must have more than 4,000 and no more than 20,000.

Type	exposure time (s)	number	Number of Fowler Reads

Type	exposure time (s)	number	Number of Fowler Reads
Dark	45	10	16
Flat off	45	10	16
Flat on	45	10	16

1. Darks

(May be done without a TO.)

Check all the lights are off around the telescope.

Setup:

Note - the telescope has to be at zenith to close the cover.

Using the DTP, take darks:

OBJ name = DARK, OBJ type = DARK
Click automatically save to save images

Don't forget to start the observing log.

Observer Cookbook - DCT 4.3m