Delta Scorpii 2011 - Day 2, June 29

One may think that a campaign like this one is just some kind of fun.
Well, it is fun.
It is because we have a genuine pleasure in it.
But it is hard work as well.
This day 2 of the campaign started at 18:00 and ended at 06:00.
Here is the team, Alberto, Thierry, Anatoly and J. Ribeiro in the control room.

This means 12 hours of work, to sleep a few hours, out of the normal schedule.
But, today we had good news. The maintenance staff has been working and solved the problem of the auto guiding.
The system is now perfectly operational and saved us hours of manual guiding.
These were great news.
We first started with the flats and darks related to the previous night; then, at the beginning of the astronomical night, we started with the star Delta Scorpii spectra in the Helium II range, followed by the calibration spectra, using a Filly lamp which had been attached to the telescope.
We found out that the signal was too weak and had to use a second lamp to increase the signal strength.
After this we changed the domain to Halfa, still in Delta Scorpii, and made the correspondent neon spectra, for calibration.
The difference here is that the neon lamp is integrated in the spectroscope.
Then we changed to 66 Ophiuchi, followed by Pi Aquarii and there was still time for the star MWC342, in Cygnus.
This is a very peculiar star, with almost no continuum, but with a very strong Halfa emission line.
This was a suggestion of Anatoly Miroshnichenko.
The flats and darks will be done tomorrow, by 18:00, before the astronomical night.
As I said, the autoguiding is now operational.
So I had the time to go out to the open air and to make some photos.
Here are two of them. One, taken from a table outside the telescope building and showing Spica, left of the Teide, and Saturn on the right, almost setting down.

The other shows the IAC80, with a beautiful Milky Way and Scorpio in the background.

The "calima" seems to be disappearing, but the wind is stronger and may impose limitations for the next night.

Alberto