The monsoon finally takes a rest on the final night of campaign 41. During the first hour or so of the night, fairly thick cirrus in the west prevented several objects from being observed before they set. However, a successful polarization measurement of Mrk421 was obtained. After that, the sky improved quickly and was clear for most of the rest of the night. The seeing during the first half of the night was an arcsec or better. After midnight, the seeing settled in at around 1.5 arcsec. The final score of campaign 41 was monsoon 6, Smith 3. It was tough going, but certainly no shutout.
This highly productive night marks the end of scheduled observations for
Cycle 4 of the Fermi mission. Support for Cycle 5 will begin
in early September 2012 at the Bok Telescope, marking the start of the
fifth consecutive
year of intensive optical spectropolarimetric and spectrophotometric
monitoring of gamma-ray-bright blazars at Steward Observatory.
