Gecko for the Support Astronomer

AGITATOR
The agitator should be turned ON at the beginning of a run, kept running the whole run, and turned OFF at the end of the run. Every night or so, the OA should check that the fiber connector at the slicer is not loose.

EXPOSURE METER
The Exposure Meter should be turned ON every night just before the first science exposures, and turned OFF at the end of the night. The modules in the control room also need to be turned ON.

DARKS
If observers want to take darks during the day, they can. The only restriction is that no one should go in the Inner Coude Room when the darks are taken. Dome lights can be turned ON when darks are being taken with Gecko.

CALIBRATION FRAMES AND CAFE CAMERA
When observers are doing calibration frames (Th/Ar lamp or Flat Field lamp) between science exposures, the CAFE TV camera is disabled (so that it does not get burned accidentally by the lamps...) and the CAFE TV screen signal is lost; therefore, the observer should tell the OA when taking calibration exposures, so that the OA can stop the guiding. If the OA was guiding on a object and the observer forgot to mention they were switching to calibration frames, the guiding will be lost.

CAFE CAMERA
The field of view is 40 arcsec in diameter. The small (inner) box is 2 arcsec wide; the big box (outer) is 6 arcsec wide.

The camera sees light picked-up from the science beam (on-axis guiding) by a circular pellicle; this pellicle does not take the whole TV screen.

Orientation of the cameras

RED MESSAGE about "Old det_z value"
When the Gecko user focuses the spectrograph (not the telescope), the "z" value for the detector (that is, the focus value), is going to change and a red message will appear saying something like:
RPM/2.7: Old det_z value was -11885.8; New value is -11901.6972943.
This is not an error message, just an information message (it shouldn't be in red). It can be ignored.

ABORT/STOP
Use the ABORT button to abort an exposure, not read it, and break a sequence if more than 1 exposure were intended. Use the STOP button to stop and read an exposure; ignore the red error message "ccd exiting... signal #1"...

CAFE SESSION, HOW TO DOWN THE SLIT SHUTTER
The Engineering Form does not work for this, so, in an Xterm window:

• type:
  telnet tremsrv3 5002
  and hit RETURN to get a prompt
• to take lamp exposures, type:
  $down cls
  put lamp on, take lamp exposures, put lamp down
• to take object exposure, type:
  $up cls
  and take the object exposure.

TELESCOPE FOCUS

• CAFE: around 2000
• TRAIN: around 4250

SESSION FROM HP
Do NOT use Emacs on the HP computer at Hale Pohaku, otherwise, the screen will go nuts (not enough memory?). If THE screen goes nuts, reboot the HP and re-log. If, after re-logging, there is an error message about Netscape, be careful, otherwise, the Gecko session forms won't work and there will be an error message in the DetI window; remove lock files in /h/geckoeev/.netscape and in /tmp, log out and re-log.

HOW TO FAKE TCS
To take calibration exposures from HP, when TCS is not up (when there is an error message in DetI window about TCS not being initialized, and OA should initialize), do:
ln -s bin/fake tcs
To unfake, do: rm tcsh.

FOCUS CHANGE ACROSS CHIP
CCD chips are not perfectly flat; some changes in focus values may be noticed across the chip.

DETAILED CONTROL OF CAFE
setenv DISPLAY DIRECTOR 2
cafe
help

16-BIT MODE FOR EEV1
To change from the 15-bit mode to the 16-bit mode, in DetI:
mode engi
opt
opt lvb 1 0
etype bias
snap
then check the mean value: if it is negative (-32000), it's OK, we are in 16-bit mode.

IQE
Not sure if IQE works or not!

FLAT FIELD LAMPS WITH TRAIN
Get hot if kept ON, and may produce bumps in flat field exposures.

"SESSION STARTUP FAILURE"
To remedy the error message "could not start server: ccd on host tethys" "session startup failure", do an agent restart in the geckoeev clone window.

WEB ACCESS TO SESSIONS

• Full version with interactions: neptune.cfht.hawaii.edu:911/~gecko/
• Version to check status only: rpm.cfht.hawaii.edu/~gecko/

"E_NESTING" ERROR MESSAGE
Go to 3d floor outer Coude, push the RESET button in the rack where the computer is (left side of the rack, upper half).

TOP MENU BAR ABSENT WHEN STARTING THE SESSION
There is locked file somewhere that prevents the user Gecko from using that menu bar. Ask the software support person to look for that file.

RIGHT-CLICK WITH GRAPHER DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE
Exit Grapher and restart it. If it happened when looking at the 2 focus exposures, open the files M1a1b3.fits and M24.fits

Aaaaahhh! I shouldn't be reading this secret stuff! Get me back to the Main page!