Training Checklist
General Introduction:
- Introduction to the INT building: lift, south and north doors, lights, exiting through other staircase, lone worker alarm, clip center, etc.
- Areas of the telescope:
- Engineering Rack
- Engineering Console
- Meteorological Data Screen
- Whiteboard with useful information
- Main desk with the following computers: slit-viewing acquisition camera, TCS and ICS computers and Data Reduction PC.
- Introduction to the public INT IDS webpages, the
online IDS Operation Manual and the SA Notes.
IDS set-up:
- Introduction to the various windows and mimics used for INT IDS observing at the Instrument Control System (inticsdisplay1).
- Introduction to the two offered INT IDS cameras, namely EEV10 and
RED+2 (depending which is required in the proposal and mounted in IDS).
- Training on the IDS setup according to the IDS SA notes.:
- changing gratings
- slit width
- central wavelenght
- knowledge of ND, colour filters and sorting filters available (above and below the slit)
- focusing the spectrograph, corrections for rotation and tilt
- sanity check of the spectrograph setup: spectral line FWHM, spectral range.
- Training on how to read IDS micrometers.
- Training on IDS Quality Control checks: measure the IDS gain and noise, check if there is dust on the IDS slit, linearity tests.
Preparing for night observations. Training on:
- How and why to take IDS calibrations (biases, lamp flats, arcs).
- How to fill the IDS cryostat with liquid nitrogen, along with the necessary safety procedures. The SA should be aware that visiting
observers must also be asked to follow these safety procedures aswell when filling the cryostat.
- Training on zerosetting the encoders
and opening and
closing the dome, along with awareness of
the weather constraints for closing down the dome.
Observing at night. Training on:
- How to determine the rotator centre, what it is and why we need to determine it.
- How to determine the slit centre position, what it is and why we need to determine it.
- How to perform a seven star calibrate, what it is and why we need to determine it. How to perform a single star calibrate.
- How to determine the IDS telescope focus.
- How to load a catalog into the TCS, how to point the telescope to a target.
- How to setup the acquisition camera, how to do the target acquisition on the slit. Use of handset to apply offsets.
- Sky orientation in the acquisition camera, how to set up the sky position angle. What is parallatic angle, why it is used.
- How to set up and use the autoguider.
- The idea of aperture offsets for changing the position of the telescope pointing within the detector field of view.
- How to do blind offsets. Why and when should be done, what is the accuracy.
- Know how to set differential tracking, and guiding. When and why use it.
- How to search suitable standard stars, why are they needed, types of standard stars (spectrophotometric, telluric, radial-velocity, etc.).
- How to evaluate the quality of a target spectrum: SNR estimation.
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Contact:
(IDS Instrument Specialist)
Last modified: 27 January 2022
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