2016B schedule, programs, and run summaries

List of 2016B programs for: MegaCam, WIRCam, ESPaDOnS, SITELLE.

QrunID Instrument HST Dates Number of Nights Status Run Summary
16BQ01 WIRCam Aug 1 1 Done Following a technical failure on MegaCam on Jul 26, we performed an emergency exchange to WIRCam. The first night saw a power outage in Waimea that ran long enough to exhaust the headquarters' UPS. Observing was resumed from the summit around midnight. A few technical glitches affected the following nights, but the excellent weather allowed for great progress on 16A and 16B programs.
16BQ02 ESPaDOnS Aug 2-15 14 Done An excellent first ESPaDOnS run to start this semester, with only 20 hours lost to weather. The run was longer than initially planned, which allowed the QSO team to make great progress on many programs.
16BQ03 WIRCam Aug 16-22 7 Done This WIRCam run was successful despite the loss of 2h due to a building chiller failure, and the loss of 2 nights at the end of the run due to high humidity. The bulk of the observations were obtained with an Image Quality below 0.75" (regardless of filter) and under photometric skies.
16BQ04 SITELLE Aug 23-31 9 Done This Sitelle run was affected by bad weather, with 3.5 nights lost to high humidity, fog, precipitation, and hurricane/storm Madeline. Some engineering time (4.5h) was dedicated to performing some adjustements to the instrument, and investigating the Image Quality.
16BQ05 MegaCam Sep 1-7 7 Done The first 3 nights were lost to bad weather brought in by hurricane Lester. The last 4 nights were mostly photometric with seeing better than 1". There was no time lost to technical issues.
16BQ06 WIRCam Sep 8-12 5 Done This short WIRCam run was relatively productive. The weather started to degrade on the 4th night (about 3h lost to high extinction) and the last night was completely lost to thick clouds, high humidity and fog.
16BQ07 ESPaDOnS Sep 13-21 9 Done The first half of the run was lost to bad weather. The conditions improved for the end of the run. With excellent Image Quality (IQ as good as 0.45"), we were able to save time on the sky by using the QSO-SNR mode, enabling us to perform more observations than initially planned.
16BQ08 MegaCam Sep 22 - Oct 10 19 Done This long run was affected by bad weather, with almost 100h lost to fog, high humidity, precipitation, and clouds. About 5h were also lost to technical issues with the focus stage assembly in MegaCam.
16BQ09 ESPaDOnS Oct 11-20 10 Done An excellent run despite the loss of about 2 nights to bad weather (mostly fog, high humidity, and precipitation).
16BQ10 MegaCam Oct 21 - Nov 6 17 Done A fair amout of engineering time was spent to gather data in the MegaCam FAST mode. Results will be presented during the upcoming SAC meting. Progress was hampered by bad weather (thick clouds), which prevented observations for almost 45 hours this run.
16BQ11 WIRCam Nov 7-20 14 Done About half the nights of this long WIRCam run were photometric; the rest of the nights were affected by variable amounts of clouds. With only little time lost to technical issue, more than 90% of the hours in A and B programs have been validated this semester.
16BQ12 SITELLE Nov 21-29 9 Done Weather affected this Sitelle run, with high extinction or high humidity recorded on a total of 22h. In addition, loss of metrology during observations is increasing overheads. Loss of metrology was not noticed on one night, and data taken that night will likely be of little use.
16BQ13 MegaCam Nov 30 - Dec 5 6 Done The whole run was lost to a snow storm.
16BQ14 ESPaDOnS Dec 6-21 16 Done In the end, because of exceptionally inclement weather, we were only able to obtain about 4 nights' worth of data. Snow, ice, fog, and winds have kept the observatory closed on other nights.
16BQ15 MegaCam Dec 22 - Jan 3 13 Done About half the nights were partially or completely lost to weather (thick clouds or high humidity).
16BQ16 ESPaDOnS Jan 4-22 19 Done This run was affected by high winds, which kept us closed for at least 1h on 5 separate nights. A couple of hours were also lost to a power glitch in Waimea. Very good progress was made on all programs that had been scheduled for this run. This concludes semester 2016B for ESPaDOnS. For A- and B-ranked programs, the overall completion rate is 67%.
16BQ17 MegaCam Jan 23 - 8 Done. One night given to SITELLE was added on Jan 23. MegaCam is using the FAST readout mode starting Jan 23, 2017. Only the very beginning and the end of the run were affected by either high humidity or clouds. A mix of 16B and 17A programs was performed.