Emphasis is placed on the safety of observers and the equipment in this
document. A hard copy of this manual is located in the 90" control room.
In the event of a discrepancy between the Web and hard copy versions of
this manual, the Web version will take precedence.
The manual was created with the help of Betsy Green,
Dave Harvey, Joe Hoeschidt, Dennis Means,
Bob Peterson, Jeff Rill, Gary Rosenbaum, Mike Terenzoni, and Bill Wood.
Comments and suggestions for this manual should be directed to Paul Smith.
If you require help or advice concerning the use of the Bok 90" Telescope or
facility instrumentation,
please contact the following people (in this order):
After hours phone numbers of these individuals can be found in the 90"
control room.
If you have questions concerning PI instrumentation that you have been
certified to use, contact the instrument PI first.
There MUST be a certified observer present in order to operate the
telescope and instrumentation.
Make sure that you have filled out and returned the Observer's Request form
emailed to you for your observing run a week or more before you arrive on the
observatory.
If you received the form within a week of your first night of observing, please
complete the form and email it back as soon as possible.
Email completed forms to
90ops@as.arizona.edu.
Please report anything amiss at the site to the Steward Observatory Kitt Peak
site supervisor or in that night's Trouble Report.
You have been assigned a room in the dormitory. Room assignments can be found
here.
Please carefully review the dormitory policies as they are strictly enforced.
In general, Bok Telescope observers are housed on the lower floor of the dorm.
Clean linen and towels are found in the cabinet within the laundry room,
which can be accessed (from the outside) on the south side of the dormitory
(lower level).
There is no daily custodial service provided. Before you leave the site, please make sure that:
Please also remember that water is a precious commodity. Please try
to not waste water during your visit.
Please remember that certification to use the
instrument for your program is a separate affair, although both certifications can be handled
at the same time if the appropriate instrument is mounted on the telescope during the
certification night(s) for operating the telescope. Do not wait until the last minute to
be certified. Make arrangements with the people that can certify you for telescope operation
and the science instrument as soon as you decide that you need to use the Bok Telescope
for your important and worthy science.
Observers should be especially alert to potential hazards
while at the observatory since
usually there will be no one else at the site during normal operations.
In addition,
help is many minutes away even assuming that you can successfully
call for help in an emergency.
Please remember that moving telescopes and domes are heavy, unforgiving
pieces of machinery that can do serious damage.
The observatory staff does its best to make the site as safe as possible,
but we urge you to report any potential hazards immediately.
In the event that the telescope has been completely
shut down because of the threat
of lightning (see Section 12) or other reasons, follow the procedure below to start up
the system (if the weather permits). Please note that following the specified
order of the steps in this procedure is important
for several of the subsystems to be properly brought back on line.
At the IIS rotator at the bottom of the telescope, the following cables and items need to be plugged in and turned on.
The relevant cables/power supplies are all identified with red tape.
With these steps completed, you are ready follow the NORMAL telescope start up procedure if it is safe to observe (see
Section 6).
If the telescope was properly shutdown after the last night it was used, the pointing should
still be adequate to easily find your first target. If, however, this is the your first night of an observing run or the instrument has been changed since the last time that the telescope
was on sky, it is recommended that pointing be established and verified.
Observer-generated catalogs can be used to efficiently choose targets during a night.
Otherwise, coordinates must be entered manually to command the telescope to move to your
next science target. (To do this, choose "Keyboard" from the Source menu and then "Next" from the Position menu. Enter the Epoch, RA, Dec, and any proper motion. Finally, select "Next" from the
mOve menu to initiate the move to the intended target.)
User catalogs follow the MMT file format EXCEPT that no variations in the "legacy" format are permitted. That is, there should be no lines beginning with "%" and there should be an entry
for all eight data fields (name, RA, Dec, RA proper motion, Dec proper motion, magnitude, spectral type, and epoch) in the proper format.
The catalog file requires a name with a ".cat" extension. Once you have constructed an object catalog, there are three ways to get the file into the proper
directory on the TCS computer:
To access the catalog, select "User Catalog" in the Source menu
and then select the proper catalog. The catalog will appear when the "Next" option is selected in the Position menu. Only one catalog can be loaded into TCS at a time, so switching catalogs or entering coordinates manually always first requires a visit to the Source menu.
The IIS Rotator allows instruments mounted at the Cassegrain f/9 focus of the telescope to
be rotated to a desired position angle (PA). The rotator PA can be adjusted with the telescope pointed in any direction. The default PA of the rotator is about 90°.
The mechanism is encoded and the value of the rotator PA can be read from the TCS screen, the WeatherHawk computer
screen, and from the two displays located near the
the rotator motor on the IIS. The displays at the IIS can be turned off to keep the
dome darker while observing, but do not turn off the encoder units.
Control of the rotator motion can be accomplished by using either the controls on
the motor control box on the IIS, or with the
control unit located in the control room on the side
of the Telescope Control Console. To use the control room unit, turn on
IIS ROTATOR on the telescope control console and make sure
that the power is turned on to the IIS motor control box.
The following rules MUST be followed when using the IIS Rotator:
If for some reason telescope pointing has been lost, and the strategies outlined
in Section 6 have not been successful, proper pointing
can be recovered by attempting the following procedures:
If correct pointing still eludes you, a "Hard stow" of the telescope may be necessary.
The "Hard stow" option is location in the mOve menu of TCS.
This is a procedure to bring the telescope back to the STOW
(zenith) position by using
the RA and DEC circles and levels internal to the telescope.
The procedure is somewhat involved and time consuming.
Therefore, observers should be convinced that they are unlikely to place
an easily identified star in the finding telescope field of view within
a reasonable time before resorting to a "Hard stow".
Make sure to correctly follow the directions issued by TCS during the
"Hard stow".
The pointing should be accurate enough at the conclusion of this procedure
to place a known star within the main finding telescope FOV.
If this has been accomplished, the pointing can be initialized as in
Section 6.
At the end of the night when there is no threat of severe weather (lightning) during the coming day, the telescope
should be shut down in the following manner:
If lightning is a serious possibility, continue to Section 12.
Lightning strikes have taken a heavy toll on equipment
at all Steward Observatory sites. At the Bok Telescope it is ESSENTIAL that the
following complete power-down sequence be executed to
"SAFE" the facility and minimize the risk of damage due
to a lightning strike:
If you hear thunder and are observing(!), quickly close down the telescope
as described in Section 11.
In addition to the steps listed in Section 11, the following steps need to be taken whenever lightning is close to the
observatory.
At the IIS rotator at the bottom of the telescope, the following cables and items need to be turned off and unplugged.
The relevant cables/power supplies are all identified with red tape.
1. Introduction and Acknowledgments.
This manual is intended to be a convenient reference guide for
observers certified to use the Bok Telescope.
Contact the Steward Observatory (SO) operations office (621-5136;
bpeterson@as.arizona.edu)
or
Paul Smith (621-2779;
psmith@as.arizona.edu)
if you need to be certified.
This manual does NOT cover detailed operations of the instruments currently
available for use at the telescope.
Please see the documentation for the specific instrument that you are interested in using
for these details and issues related to the instrumentation.
Back to the top of the document.2. Site Information, Policies, and Good Manners.
IMPORTANT: Please read the
Guidelines
for Observing at Steward Observatory telescopes.
Arriving at the observatory:
Departure from the observatory:
Back to the top of the document.3. Observer Certification and Safety.
Before operating the telescope by themselves, observers need to be trained and formally
certified on all of the procedures covered in this manual by an experienced user of the
telescope who has been previously certified and is listed as
someone that is able to certify new observers.
Certification, for local, Tucson area observers involves going to the telescope with
an observer on the certifier list and being trained
to use the telescope. This should be done BEFORE your science observing run. That is, you
will be trained on the certifier's night on the telescope unless another arrangement is mutually agreed upon. It is at the sole discretion of the certifying party how much training is needed to declare an observer capable to safely operate the Bok Telescope. Difficult cases may take multiple nights, so pay attention! No observer will be allowed to operate the
telescope unless they are certified.
If necessary, certification for out-of-town observers may be handled a night or two before their observing
run begins, or during the first few nights of the run to minimize travel.
Back to the top of the document.
4. Weather Limits.
We ask observers to adhere to the following guidelines to
protect the telescope and instrumentation from weather that will damage
these valuable research facilities:
Back to the top of the document.5. Starting the Telescope from Scratch ("COLD" Start).
Back to the top of the document.6. Normal Start up of the Telescope ("WARM" Start).
When there is no threat of severe weather, the telescope is shut down in
the normal manner (Section 11). In this case
you should not have to start the UPSs and reconnect telescope control
cabling. Also, all computers should be up and running. If this is not the
case, see the appropriate material in Section 5. Also, if the telescope has been completely shut down, please refer
to Section 5 for the full start up procedure.
Back to the top of the document.7. Starting to Observe
Back to the top of the document.8. Loading and Using Catalogs.
Back to the top of the document.9. Using the IIS Rotator.
Back to the top of the document.10. What to do if Telescope Pointing is Lost.
Back to the top of the document.11. Finishing a Night of Observing (a "NORMAL" Shut down).
Back to the top of the document.12. Shutting Down the Telescope for Lightning.
Back to the top of the document.
Back to the 90" Home Page.
