2018B schedule, programs, and run summaries

List of 2018B programs for: MegaCam, WIRCam, ESPaDOnS, and SITELLE.

QrunID Instrument HST Dates # Nights Status Run Summary
18BQ01 SPIRou Aug 1 - 5 5 Done  
18BQ02 MegaCam Aug 6 - 15 10 Done  
18BQ03 ESPaDOnS Aug 16 - 18 3 Done ESPaDOnS' spectrograph was damaged during an electrical storm on Aug 18; the night of Aug 18/19 was mostly lost to high humidity. The rest of the run has been cancelled for now.
18BQ04 WIRCam Aug 19 - 20 2 Done  
18BQ05 ESPaDOnS Aug 21 - 29 8 Done ESPaDOnS' spectrograph was configured in the Star + Sky mode, and the camera focus was set at a reasonable position. Other Observing modes are not available at this time. Due to a technical issue with the top end handling ring, we were not able to mount WIRCam after the ESPaDOnS run. The exchange to MegaCam was performed one day early.
18BQ06 MegaCam Aug 30 - Sep 13 15 Done This was a successful MegaCam run, with the equivalent of about 9 photometric nights, and sub arcsec Image Quality the majority of the time. The latter part of the run was affected by hurricane Olivia, which thankfully avoided the Big Island.
18BQ07 WIRCam Sep 14 - 20 7 Done Almost 24 hours were lost to weather, but there were no technical issues.
18BQ08 SPIRou Sep 21 - 25 5 Done The SPIRou technical commissionning continued.
18BQ09 SITELLE Sep 26-27 2 Done Engineering related to the improvement of the Image Quality
18BQ10 ESPaDOnS Sep 28 - Oct 1 4 Done This very short run was successful, despite extinction that was heavy at times. ESPaDOnS was repaired successfully after the August lightning strike.
18BQ11 SITELLE Oct 2 - 11 10 Done This run was affected by high humidity and precipitation (about 3 full nights lost). The image quality was around 1" during observations. Progress has been made on a few programs.
18BQ12 MegaCam Oct 12 - 15 4 Done This very short run was hampered by bad weather (about 2 and a half nights lost).
18BQ13 ESPaDOnS Oct 16 - 23 8 Done ESPaDOnS is back into normal operations, and all 3 Observing Modes were available. The first snow of the season lightly dusted the summit on Oct 20/21. About half a night was lost to a communications issue with the summit, and a little over 3 nights were lost to high humidity. The priority was given to the top-ranked programs.
18BQ14 SPIRou Oct 24 - 25 2 Done Both nights were mostly photometric, and allowed for an on-sky measurement of the (polarisation) cross-talk.
18BQ15 WIRCam Oct 26 - Nov 1 7 Done This was a poor run for WIRCam, with only the last 1.5 nights with clear weather.
18BQ16 MegaCam Nov 2 - 14 13 Done This was a relatively poor run, with only 3 solid nights of photometric skies. During all other nights, we were closed at some point because of high humidity or clouds. The total time lost to weather is almost 60h.
18BQ17 ESPaDOnS Nov 15 - 19 5 Done This was a rather unproductive short run that was affected by bad weather.
18BQ18 WIRCam Nov 20 - 28 9 Done This was a productive run, with only 7h lost to cloudy weather; 70% of hours in A-ranked programs have been validated, and 42% of hours for B-ranked programs have been validated. An additional short run might get scheduled in January.
18BQ19 SITELLE Nov 29 - Dec 6 8 Done This was a very good run weather-wise, with only 4.5h lost to high humidity. We had about 5.5h lost to technical issues related to loss of modulation efficiency.
18BQ20 MegaCam Dec 7 - 16 10 Done This was an excellent run with fewer than 5h lost to high extinction, and round 1.5h lost to technical issues.
18BQ21 SPIRou Dec 17 - 19 3 Done  
18BQ22 ESPaDOnS Dec 20 - 27 8 Done This run started with excellent conditions (4 nights of clear skies and very good seeing) and ended in high humidity (last 4 nights).
18BQ23 MegaCam Dec 28 - Jan 14 18 Done This was an excellent run, with much drier weather than what the summit of Maunakea has been experiencing over the past months. The Image Quality was also excellent.
18BQ24 SPIRou Jan 15 - 17 3 Done  
18BQ25 WIRCam Jan 18-22 5 Done This short run was productive, thanks to the good weather (only 4h were lost to high humidity.)
18BQ26 ESPaDOnS Jan 23-27 5 Done This short run was very productive, despite some time lost to weather (fog), and unusually high Image Quality during the last nights (seeing well above 1 arcsec, up to 2-3 arcsec!)
18BQ27 MegaCam Jan 28 4 Done