The instrument set up phase continues...

Last night there was a storm nearing Alert and this morning there was some concern, as the winds picked up, that we might get stuck up at the lab. However, when Michael, Richard B. and Richard M. got back to the weather station, they assured us that the winds were lighter up at AStrO/PEARL. They reported that the sky conditions were even better for lidar measurements than yesterday night. They started recording at 11 PM and continued for 7 hours.

After breakfast, we headed up to the lab to continue setting up the campaign instruments. Annemarie set up and started calibrating the grating spectrometer. She completed the focusing and resolution tests today. Keith and I investigated which hatch to mount the SAOZ in. This involved moving some furniture and rearranging the DOAS experiment area. Annemarie very kindly shifted over her experiment set up so that the scaffold could be positioned beneath both the DOAS and SAOZ hatches. To build the new platform for SAOZ, Keith salvaged as much lumber as he could from the hatch we decided not to use.

I set up the SAOZ inside the lab to test that it was working. It turns out that there were some missing cables which were replaced by spares from UoT and UW. SAOZ started up without a problem but apparently could not pick up signals from any GPS satellites and therefore thought that it was still in Paris. I have moved it close to a window and will see if this helps it locate any satellites tomorrow.

Clive unpacked MAESTRO and got it working. He and Jennifer had some problems getting MAESTRO and SPS working with the tracker software today. So they plan to take the instruments up on to the roof tomorrow and operate the tracker in manual mode until the software issues are resolved.

Keeyoon and I aligned the blackbody source and collimating mirror to perform calibration measurements with PARIS. Once the instrument was scanning, there were some problems with the control software on the laptop computer running slower than it should. The source of this will be investigated tomorrow.

We had a productive day at AStrO/PEARL and look forward to starting measurements soon!

Best regards,
Kaley.