Mopra QRH The Mopra Quick Reference Handbook Available online at http://www.narrabri.atnf.csiro.au/mopra/ Current Date / Version 15 MAY 2013 Author Dr Balthasar Indermuehle (balt.indermuehle@csiro.
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Table of contents 1. Preamble................................................................. 1 1.1. How to use the Quick Reference Handbook (QRH) ........................... 1 1.2. Important note..................................................................................... 2 2. Changes .................................................................. 3 3. Observatory Characteristics .................................. 5 3.1. Location ....................
5.8.2. 5.8.3. 5.8.4. 5.8.5. 5.8.6. Setting focus............................................................................... 27 Pointing ...................................................................................... 28 Starting your observations ......................................................... 29 Verifying your data (QuickData.py) ............................................ 29 Processing your data .....................................................
9.2.1. 9.2.2. 9.2.3. 9.2.4. 9.2.5. 9.2.6. 9.2.7. 9.2.8. 30min WindMax High ................................................................. 47 Telescope idle and not stowed................................................... 47 Generator is running .................................................................. 47 Some lightning activity ............................................................... 47 Heavy lightning activity nearby......................
1. Preamble 1.1. How to use the Quick Reference Handbook (QRH) The QRH is meant to be used as a reference for all observers. It contains checklists, procedures and recommendations on how to proceed when certain conditions exist. Most importantly, the QRH should be consulted by new observers on how to set up their observing environment. The QRH alone provides sufficient guidance for a new observer who has never observed with Mopra before to get all observing software up and running.
Normal procedures provide you with checklists on how to set up the software when you take over from previous observers, and how to configure standard parameters. The Abnormal procedures section is what you refer to when a problem has occurred and you need to work around it within the scope of what we expect you to be able to accomplish.
2. Changes Date 20 JUN 2009 06 JUL 2009 Who ind006 ind006 07 JUL 2009 ind006 22 JUL 2009 ind006 05 AUG 2009 ind006 17 SEP 2009 ind006 08 OCT 2009 ind006 02 FEB 2010 ind006 What QRH created New chapters: 5.2 Creating your schedule 5.3 Selecting your pointing source 5.3 Find your zooms with mops_vis or OTF v6 Modified: Table formatting has been changed. 5.10 Monitoring New chapters: 5.8.5 Verifying your data (QuickData.py) 5.10.1 TOAD New chapters: 5.11 Finishing the observations Modified: 5.
5.7.1 Using Python Chat for coordination Error! Reference source not found. Error! Reference source not found. 30 MAY 2011 ind006 Modified: Replaced missing figure 14 Consistently put captions below figures 5.7.3 Handing over from 2-screen to 4-screen and vice versa New Chapters: 5.7.1 Using Python Chat for Coordination 6.8 Unable to bring GTP’s down/up into normal range Replaced Chapters: 5.7.
3. Observatory Characteristics 3.1. Location Mopra is located in the foothills of Siding Spring, near Coonabarabran in rural New South Wales, Australia. Latitude S 31° 16’ 04” S 31.2678 Longitude E 149° 05’ 59” E 149.0997 Altitude 866m 866m Table 1 Observatory position 3.2. System Characteristics Parameter Global pointing model Global fx Global fz Value 8.3” 13.0” -197.5 10.
7mm @ 42 GHz 3mm @ 90 GHz 3mm @ 115 GHz 82” 38” 30” ~ 80K ~200K ~ 600K Table 5 Beam widths and average Tsys's Frequency 16 GHZ 20 GHz 25 GHz 31 GHz 35 GHz 37 GHz 43 GHz 45 GHz 49 GHz 86 GHz 100 GHz 115 GHz Efficiency 0.55 +/- 0.05 0.5 +/- 0.03 0.55 +/- 0.05 0.5 +/- 0.05 0.57 +/- 0.02 0.58 +/- 0.02 0.55 +/- 0.03 0.53 +/- 0.03 0.46 +/- 0.03 0.49 +/- 0.03 0.44 +/- 0.03 0.42 +/- 0.
Figure 2 Antenna efficiency at 12mm and 7mm Page 7 of 54
Figure 3 Tsys at 3mm from Ladd et al. The following fit is used to calculate in TOAD whether the Tsys is in range that yields a somewhat conservative fit to the Ladd data above. The yellow limit is Tsys[max], the red limit is Tsys[max]+150. 0.02487 f Tsys[max] = 21.86e 3.3. MOPS configurations € MOPS is a spectrometer implemented as a digital filter bank rather than a correlator. Note that for historical reasons, it is often and throughout the community referred to as the correlator as well.
Internally, MOPS contains 4 IF’s, or Bands. Refer to Figure 4 MOPS bands and IF's to see how they are arranged and relate to each other.
Figure 4 MOPS bands and IF's In Zoom mode, the zoom windows are arranged as depicted in the following graph. Use mops_vis to determine the window numbers to use in your schedule, as well as to optimize the center frequency. Alternatively, you can also use the new on the fly schedule maker version 6.0, it features a graphical zoom window editor similar to mops_vis.
Figure 5 MOPS zoom window definitions Further to this, the MOPS zoom window setups and spectral resolutions can be seen in the following graph Page 11 of 54
Figure 6 MOPS zoom mode specifications 3.4. Data rates You need to make sure you bring enough disk space to take your data home. Refer to Table 7 MOPS configurations and data rates above to calculate the amount of data your observing run will generate. 3.5. Fast mapping mode As of 2010, Mopra now also supports a fast mapping mode, where a maximum of 8 zoom windows can record spectra in 8 time bins per cycle. The cycle time for fast mapping is changed from 2 seconds to 2.
4. Command references 4.1. SPD Command select 1 2 3 4 select 1 & 2 a auto noauto av save d q a y1 y2 d y1 y2 chan x1 x2 chan f2 x1 x2 chan bins u v w Action View both pols in IF’s 1 & 2 in separate graphs, amplitude vs.
4.2. MOTP Command sel * sca y1 y2 sca sel cal Action Selects all powers, required when MOPS has been restarted. Changes the Y scale of the display to the range y1 to y2 Changes the scale automatically to include the largest and smallest values. Displays the calibration signal powers. Table 9 MOTP command reference 4.3. MOPS Command matten au matten ma matten a w x y z Action Switches the attenuators to automatic. A maximum attenuation of 12 is set when automatic mode is selected.
5. Normal procedures 5.1. Observing Checklist Before starting your observations make sure you have • Selected a good pointing source. Good means: o As close to your target as possible. Use our SiO maser database with the angular distance display. o As bright as possible: At 3mm in Zoom or Broadband mode you’d like a source brighter than 1.5K to reliably point, in Fastmap mode 2K or brighter. • Plan to update the pointing every 1.5 hours if not moving away to other sources.
5.3. v5 Find your zooms with mops_vis or OTF v6 or PSW mops_vis is a script application written by Erik Muller, which runs on any platform supporting wish. It has been tested on Linux, Windows/Cygwin as wel as OSX. Simply enter the frequencies of the lines you are interested in or select them from a list of preloaded molecular species. Then enter a center frequency you think will optimize detection. You can optimize the center frequency by pressing the +10 MHz or -10 MHz buttons.
Alternatively, you can use the graphical editor from the on the fly (OTF) or the position switch (PSW) schedule maker version 6 (version 5 for PSW). It’s slightly less elegant, but requires no installation on your part, simply point your browsers at the schedule maker http://www.narrabri.atnf.csiro.au/mopra/scheduler/potf-v6.0.html or http://www.narrabri.atnf.csiro.au/mopra/scheduler/pswitch-v5.0.
5.5. Setting up the observatory software While observing from an ATNF supported Mopra control desk, you will be presented with a four-monitor setup.
Screen 1 (TCS) Screen 2 (MOPS) Screen 3 (SPD) Screen 4 (TOAD) atdaemon TCS dclocks MOPS MOTP atdrivemon SPD Pointings attest TOAD (in browser, on local machine, not in a VNC session) Depends on which virtual desktop is selected in this window. Table 11 Application distribution in the VNC sessions Please read the following sections depending on whether you are using a two or four monitor setup. If you have not yet set up your VNC connections, refer to 5.6 Setting up your VNC connections first.
Compare the layout of the screen you have just created, try to make it look similar: Figure 9 VNC screen 1 Then set up screen number 1, the one that is controlling TCS: • Connect your VNC client to mpvnc1.atnf.csiro.au:10 • Make sure the virtual screen square says “TCS”, if not, press the up or down arrows with the mouse until it does so. • Start a blue bigrock terminal (right click on background) and execute the following commands in it: o Restart atdaemon: atdaemonrestart o Start the clocks.
o When the window has come up, dismiss the skyviewer window (unless you would like to use it), and dismiss any warnings that might be present. o Ascertain that the “antenna”, “LO chain”, “attenuator” and “correlator” indicators are green. If any of them are amber, click on them and try to enable/set them. If that does not work, contact the DA or staff. Figure 10 VNC screen 2 Continue by setting up screen number three: • Connect your VNC client to mpvnc1.atnf.csiro.
Figure 11 VNC screen 3 • • • Clicke the up arrow in the virtual screen square until it says “Pointing”.
Figure 12 VNC screen 3 on the pointing virtual desktop • • • Lastly, click on the up arrow one more time to access the “Utilities” screen. Open another blue bigrock terminal and execute attest You can also use this utilities screen to muck around with other terminal windows and editors to your liking. Last, but not least, start a web browser and point it at the TOAD address: http://www.narrabri.atnf.csiro.
purpose make use of the virtual screen button’s top right and bottom left arrows to click into to the next available virtual desktop: Figure 13 Virtual desktop switcher 5.6. Setting up your VNC connections All Mopra observing is done from one machine residing physically at Mopra by way of connecting to it via VNC. VNC is a remote desktop software, allowing you to control the observatory software. The computer you will be connecting to for all your observing is called mpvnc1.atnf.csiro.
Figure 14 VNC screens and virtual desktop arrangements in multi screen mode 5.6.2. Two screen setup In the two screen setup: • • One screen is used to connect to the first VNC server The second screen runs TOAD (locally, not in a VNC window!) Most remote observers that operate from their own institutions will probably find themselves connecting in this kind of setup.
section (5.7.1) detailing one facility we have installed to facilitate this coordination. This is to • • 5.7.1. Exchange information on the status of Mopra Coordinate the actual handover details: o Are you taking over immediately and does the telescope not need to be stowed? o Will you be running a four-screen setup and the previous observer ran in a two-screen setup? If so, follow the procedures below.
If you’re in two-screen mode and would like to make sure MOPS is not running already, in the terminal window that starts MOPS in the second VNC window, type killmops, then mops to start it. 5.8. Running your observations 5.8.1. Moving/copying your schedule files Your schedule files need to be copied to bigrock into the following directory structure: bigrock:/nfs/online/local/tcs/sched/2011/MXXX where XXX is your project number.
Wavelength 3mm 7mm 12mm 2.5cm 3cm 20cm Subreflector position 16.2 16.2 16.2 10.0 -2.0 -25 focus Table 12 Focus positions Select the slider in the focus tab, and click the GO button: Figure 16 Focusing screen 5.8.3. Pointing The telescope needs pointings done about once every 1.5 hours during observing in the same area of the sky, or whenever you move more than 30 degrees away from the last pointing source, and once before you start your observations.
5.8.4. Starting your observations Upon completion of the pointing, you can start your schedule by loading the schedule file into TCS and execute them. Use appropriate monitoring to make sure you are receiving proper data. Remember to always check the bandpasses in your data in SPD on your first scan of the day, and every time you change from broadband to zoom mode. FPGA programming errors can result to spikes in the bandpasses that will ruin the data for that particular IF.
Figure 17 QuickData interface 5.8.6. Processing your data Your data is initially stored on MPCCC1 (the MOPS control computer), and gets rsynced every 15 minutes to the archive disk at Narrabri, where you will be picking the data up.
Mopra data is stored in /DATA/ARCHIVE_1/Mopra/ accessible from Kaputar. The file name convention is YYYY-MM-DD_HHMM-MXXX.rpf, where XXX is your project number. You can access those files by logging into Kaputar with your ATNF account. For further details on data processing, refer to the online tutorials for ASAP as well as Livedata/Gridzilla here: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/computing/software/asap/ http://www.atnf.csiro.au/computing/software/livedata.html 5.9.
Figure 18 Beam position map on a windy day Compare this to a map with missing scans. If you see a map like this, you are very likely going to want to redo it.
Figure 19 Beam position map with scans gone badly 5.10. Monitoring 5.10.1. TOAD TOAD (Telescope Operator Alerting Display) is a web browser based monitoring tool. It monitors well over 400 parameters of the telescope systems and knows dozens of failure modes of various components and how to fix them.
Use this URL from inside or outside ATNF to load TOAD: http://mopra-ops.atnf.csiro.au/TOAD TOAD is compatible with Mozilla based browsers such as: • • • • Firefox / Iceweasel Google Chrome Safari Opera It is NOT compatible with Internet Explorer due to Microsoft’s lack of canvas object support. TOAD somewhat works on IE5 through 7, but does not work at all in IE8. It is also NOT compatible with Konqueror. On first startup in a new browser, TOAD will display an INVALID PAGE.
The SYNOPtic page displays (Refer to Figure 21 TOAD synoptic display): • • • • • • • • • • • • • Antenna state (TRACKING, SLEWING, STOWED etc.) Weather conditions. Note that the weather condition quality (i.e.
• Static quick access data. This data is always displayed, regardless of which page is selected. o Drive state, Azimuth and Elevation o Wind direction and speed o Temperature, relative humidity, precipitable water vapour (calculated figure) and atmospheric pressure. o Timestamp in UTC when the last chunk of monitoring data was received. This can be useful to determine whether TOAD is updating properly or whether it has frozen .
Always follow the instructions TOAD gives to recover from a failure. Acquaint yourself with the CLEAR and RECALL functions for the warning display: • • CLEAR stops any alarm sounds and puts the warnings into the background. RECALL displays those warnings that are still current and have been CLEARed. These functions will help you manage a clean workflow with good situation awareness. 5.10.2.
Figure 22 Wind monitoring page in Monica Page 38 of 54
5.11. Finishing the observations When your observations are done, either hand over the telescope to the next observers or stow it. There is no further cleanup activity required apart from stowing. Stowing is accomplished by pressing the “Park” button in TCS.
6. Abnormal procedures Most system malfunctions and advisory conditions are programmed into TOAD. You will be presented with a diagnostic message along with a recommended remedial action to resolve the conflict. Please follow the on screen instructions in the event of such a failure. Consult with the DA or observatory staff if you’re not sure what to do. 6.1. Restarting TCS If TCS is hanging, or starting to behave very sluggishly, a restart of TCS can be indicated: • • • • 6.2.
• 6.3. After MOPS has restarted, TCS must be reconnected to MOPS. For that purpose, o dismiss the warning messages informing you of the demise of MOPS o click on the amber indication displaying CORRELATOR o select ENABLE from the dropdown menu Restarting atdaemon Do not run this procedure unless instructed to do so by observatory staff. No wiki/FAQ/someone’s notes should be used to justify running this. Only do it when staff tell you explicitly to do so.
6.4.2. • • Via MAPS reset button Walk to the MAPS panel in the PMON rack at Narrabri (this obviously only works if you’re on site in Narrabri) Press the button labelled “ACC Reset” for at least 30 seconds (you will need a watch) and give it a minute to reboot Once the ACC has rebooted, it automatically becomes available and the required setup information is automatically furnished to the ACC. 6.5. MOPS programming errors MOPS sometimes does not properly complete its own programming.
6.6. Problems with the VNC sessions 6.6.1. VNC Server does no longer accept keyboard input Right-click with the mouse on the desktop, and select “Workspace Menu” -> “Restart Window Manager”. This will make a temporary mess on your screen, and you will find yourself in the wrong virtual desktop inside the VNC session. Simply go back to the original desktop using the navigation buttons on the top lefthand side and you should now be able to enter text with the keyboard again. 6.6.2.
6.8. Unable to bring GTP’s down/up into normal range Under some circumstances (usually weather inflicted), it is possible that you are unable to use “matten au” in MOPS to bring the gated total powers into the appropriate range. In these cases you always first try to tame the powers with the MOPS attenuators: MOPS only automatically sets attenuators in the range of 0 to 12. Any higher attenuation (up to 15 is available) must be set manually.
7. Emergency If an emergency occurs that is not covered by any of the other checklists or is not covered by TOAD: • Contact the Duty Astronomer. If you are remote observing, the telephone numbers for the DA should have been communicated to you.
8. Glossary Moprabub Your nemesis. Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent, personified in this case by an 'orrible ... me! (For the full, uncensored version of this, refer to the movie “Snatch”) 9. TOAD Message Reference 9.1. Information Messages (Gray) These messages refer to information content only. 9.1.1. Track has started Message ID: Triggers when: 9.1.2. Track has ended Message ID: Triggers when: 9.1.3.
9.2.1. 30min WindMax High Message ID: Triggers when: and 3 The 30 minute maximum wind is greater or equal 35km/h the antenna servo state is not stowed. This message alerts the observer to strong winds and the possibility of a wind stow. 9.2.2. Telescope idle and not stowed Message ID: Triggers when: 4 Idle or drive_error time exceeds 5 minutes while at an elevation of less than 84 degrees.
Triggers when: the ACC is in local mode. The ACC can be put into local or remote mode by connecting to the remote console. 9.2.7. MOPS Pol A counts out of bounds Message ID: Triggers when: 9.2.8. MOPS Pol B counts out of bounds Message ID: Triggers when: 9.3. 38 Any of the Pol A GTP’s are below 0.1 or above 1.0 39 Any of the Pol B GTP’s are below 0.1 or above 1.0 Error Messages (Red) These messages concern critical components of the telescope that have failed or are about to fail.
The lightning threa level is derived from the lightning detector and expresses a threat level indicating the need to run generators up to storm stowing the telescope. 9.3.4. Severe lightning threat with generator off Message ID: Triggers when: 10 The generator is not running and the threat level is greater than 2 Indicates possibly a failed generator start. Give the generator ample time to start running, on the order of 5 minutes. 9.3.5. Focus disagree Message ID: Triggers when: 9.3.6.
This error can have many different origins and does not necessarily mean something is broken. When a hardware stow is issued for instance, the drive error triggers as well, because the ACC is no longer in control of the drives.
9.3.15. WIND Hardware Stow Message ID: Triggers when: 31 Mopra anemometers have issued a hardware stow. This stow cannot be overridden, you have to wait for it to be released. 9.3.16. NARRABRI Hardware Stow Message ID: Triggers when: 32 Mopra has been issued a hardware stow from the PMON rack in Narrabri. This stow cannot be overridden, you have to wait for it to be released. 9.3.17. Dataset Query Failed Message ID: Triggers when: failed 33 MAPS 5MQ failed.
9.3.22. MOPS Pol A noise diode faulty Message ID: Triggers when: 40 Pol A SDO is below 0.002 or above 1 This is indicative of the noise injection having failed. 9.3.23. MOPS Pol B noise diode faulty Message ID: Triggers when: 41 Pol B SDO is below 0.002 or above 1 This is indicative of the noise injection having failed. 9.3.24. Sound is switched off Message ID: Triggers when: 42 The sound is switched off on TOAD. Note that the sound should never be switched off.
Figure 5 MOPS zoom window definitions ........................................................... 11 Figure 6 MOPS zoom mode specifications ......................................................... 12 Figure 7 mops_vis sample screen ...................................................................... 16 Figure 8 OTF v6 Graphical zoom window editor................................................. 17 Figure 9 VNC screen 1 ......................................................................
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