EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY La Silla - Science Operation Department

Preliminary remarks

The La Silla Nightlog Tool (LSNL, version 2.0) is now in routine operation at all three telescopes (NTT, 2p2, 3p6). It is very similar to the previously used NightLog Tool 1.0 in operation at the 2p2 telescope, with some additional functionality. The La Silla NightLog Tool 2.0 is a clone/adaptation of the Paranal NightLog Tool (PANL 2.0). A guideline of the operation basics is presented in the following. The guideline is basically taken from the PANL 2.0 description on the Paranal Sciops web pages and adapted to La Silla operation details. A full description of the PANL 2.0 can be found in the PANL 2.0 manual.

Responsibilities

• The day TIO fills the general fields and day time calibrations
• The night TIO fills the night time activities, the weather report (weather officer), and the instrument statistics. He also checks the log for consistency before sending it at the end of the night.
• During service mode, the astronomer classifies the observations of the individual OBs
• During visitor mode, the visiting astronomer can make comments in the corresponding field in order to add information to the OBlog that is retrieved semi-automatically. A "visitor report" can be printed and emailed by pressing the corresponding button. It contains the full nightlog of observations, and makes fitslist obsolete.
• Every day the shift leader checks the nightlogs of all three telescopes and makes sure that possible inconsistencies/errors will be corrected.

How to start the LSNL 2.0

The client must be started and running on machine wlsops2. The login account is different for the three telescopes (ls-ntt, ls-360, ls-220). All have the same (usual) password.

The client can be opened from any UNIX xterm on the astronomers/users side. On the TIOs operation PC for each telescope we have set up a X command (abbreviation "NightLog") that automatically opens the client for the TIO. Clients can run in parallel.

• To start the tool type on an xterm on wlsops2:
  aruser & (no password is necessary)
• Press on the new task icon
• Select La Silla Nightlog 2.0 and press the New button
• To add any information that has been entered in the forms to the data base you have to submit the corresponding form using the provided Submit button,
• To modify submitted entries in the data base either
  • modify the corresponding field and resubmit the changes (e.g. in the General Form)
  • double-click on the entry you want to change in the submission list which will pop-up a modification panel, make your modifications, and save them to the data base by pressing the Save button in the upper right corner of the panel. After saving, the modification panel can be closed using the pulldown menu File -> Close (but not Exit)
• ... buttons allow to edit free text fields more confortable
• Times have always to be entered in the HH:MM format
• Submitted action request are sent immediately when the Submit button is pressed. They cannot be modified from LSNL afterwards.

Operation essentials

During the day:

• To start the new report set the current date and select the corresponding telescope, press the Refresh button
• Fill in the names of the operation personal
• Select the observing modes used during the night
• submit the General Form to create the initial data base entry for this day
• Enter setup activies in the Setup Activities form. This includes change of optical components in the instruments, software restarts workstation reboots, software upgrades and template installations, updates of the calibration data base on the pipeline machines.
• Identify the calibration OB created by calobBuild by filling manually the OB ID, Program ID, OB Name fields (at the NTT and 3p6 Calob OBs can currently not be inserted into the nightlog)
• If the OB is present in the repository, get the repository information on the OB by filling the OB ID and pressing the Enter key.
• To get a list of the lastest executed OBs, select Search in the pulldown menu next to OB ID field. Wait a few seconds to allow the information to be retrieved. Then select the OB ID from the list and press the Enter key to retrieve the repository information
• Press the Retrieve button to log all calibration files associated with the last execution of the OB; the start and end time of OB execution are filled automatically, too.
• If no repository information could be retrieved for a given OB ID, the instrument name, OB Name, and Run ID must be entered manually. This allows the Retrieve button to obtain the file information.
• If file lists from previous executions of the OB need to be retrieved, use the Retrieve All button.
• Classify and submit the calibration OB. In case of OBs classified as non-valid, give the reason in the Comments field.

During the night:

• Whenever the instrument and/or the mode is changed during the night press the Retrieve button on the General Form to update the time statistics for the last used instrument-mode combination and to record the time of change.
• Enter general comments in the Comments form. This should include times of instrument and observing mode change, and all information/activities during technical nights.
• Get the repository information on an OB by typing the OB ID and pressing the Enter key. Note that new OBs if prepared with p2pp will receive their OB ID when fetched with BOB. Further, OBs loaded from the instrument workstation disk are NOT present in the repository and therefore, no information on them can be automatically retrieved.
• To get a list of the latest executed OBs, select Search in the pull-down menu next to OB ID field. Wait a few seconds to allow the information to be retrieved. Then select the OB ID from the list and press the Enter key to retrieve the repository information
• Press the Retrieve button to log all files associated with the last execution of the OB; the start and end time of OB execution are filled automatically, too.
• If file lists from previous executions of the OB need to be retrieved, use the Retrieve All button.
• Mark fulfillment of constraints
• Classify and submit the OB
• The weather officer fills during the night the report of the weather conditions in the new weather report form. If weather conditions change or the telescopes are closed or re-opened a new entry has to be submitted.
  
• Note that the weather report information is common to all telescopes. To see the actual state of the weather report, select the weather report form and press the Refresh all fields button.

End of the night:

• The weather officer fills in the General conditions of the Night at the end of the night.
• The night TIO fills the time statistics per instrument and mode combination by pressing again the Retrieve button which will also fill the Time used per instrument mode.
  It is important that during the night, the Retrieve button has already been used at any change of instrument and/or mode (cf. above).
  
• Always double-check whether the correct instrument(s) and mode(s) are selected. For instrument select the name of the instrument not the name of the telescope!
• The times for science, acquisition, calibration, and standard stars are determined from the corresponding scripts on each instrument machine and have to be filled by hand. (When using the same instrument in visitor and service mode during a night, don't forget to run the script after each change to get the individual times of each mode!) The sum of all Time used entries must correspond to the Night Length field. The automatic computation of the time statistics will only be implemented for the facility instruments and Service and Visitor modes.
• The night astronomer fills the Time Loss statistics of the night per instrument and mode combination. All times are reported for the UT times Night Begin to Night End (i.e. astronomical evening twilight to astronomical morning twilight).
• Make sure that the last modifications in the General Form and the latest OBs, Comments, etc. are submitted before printing and sending the report
• The complete report can be send and printed with the Print/Send Complete Report button. The default email group for the distribution list is named NightReport
• An additional report for visitors is send and printed with the Print/Send Visitor Report button. The email address of the visitor has to be entered in the corresponding field.
• Check that a copy of the report(s) has arrived on the telescope's email account and as *.rep in the /temp directory of wlsops2. (After a service night at the NTT, ftp the *.rep to the usual logfile directory on wg5off, i.e. /data/NTTOPS/ServiceObserving/Period_xx/Logs.)

Tips and Tricks:

• How to delete a wrong filling for instrument/mode: Select the wrong instrument/mode and put 00:00 for all times, press submit.

Action request forms

The card "Action Request" (in red) is used to issue LS PRS tickets and LS dataflow (backup) requests (NTT, 3p6, 2p2) and to send requests to USG or QC and to the Dataflow group in Garching (2p2 only!). Please use only this way to submit problem reports related to day or night operations!

Each of the following forms contains invisible fields which are preset to values specific for submissions from the LSNL tool at the telescope:

La Silla PRS
(Problem Reporting System)

• All fields with exception of cc list are mandatory to be filled
• For Hours Lost only night time is taken into account (cf. above)
• The TIOs have to submit NEW reports through the AR form in the PANL tool so that the problem description is included in the night report.

USG PRS/QC
(User Support Group Problem Reporting System/Quality Control)

• Currently relevant for 2p2 only!
• All requests to USG and QC are sent through this form
• Important: for all details on the contents consult the PANL user manual

La Silla Dataflow

• This form must be used to request the data release to visiting astronomers from the data handling group
• The request with the information as specified in the PANL user manual should be submitted in the first observing night of the visitor

DFS PRS
(Dataflow System Problem Reporting System)

• This form must be used to report problems to the Data Flow System group in Garching.
• All problems related to DFS tools like p2pp, OT, Gasgano, DataSubscriber, and the pipeline belong to this group

LSNL known bugs (Version 2.0)

• A large number of error and warning messages appears when printing. This is due to the AR internal report generator. Not possible to fix.
  Workaround: close all Error message windows during printing process