Thursday morning began with temperatures in the low -40's, little wind, and few clouds. Between the favourable weather and just slightly over 7 hours of sunlight slated for the day, the team had high hopes for a productive day as they headed to the PEARL Ridge Lab. The clear skies lasted most of the way through the day allowing for numerous solar measurements to be made across different instruments. On a different note, some of the team members were lucky enough to catch sight of a pair of muskox who ambled very near to the weather station during the afternoon.
Over at 0PAL, the CRL measured in the UV for 13.5 hours on March 1st. Today in the lab, Emily removed the clamp from the new patch on laser 1, and is letting the adhesive finish curing until this evening. She took care of some data backup and archiving tasks, and processed the data from the first few days of the campaign.
Sébastien and Erik found the clear skies of this morning to be promising for Bruker-FTS measurements. When they arrived at the lab, they cooled the Bruker's detectors as they waited for the Sun to rise before starting the solar tracker. Once the solar tracker was running, mid-infrared measurements were started and ran throughout the day without interruption. 66 measurements were taken in total before the Sun set. Sebastien and Erik are planning to continue measurements tomorrow.
Kristof, with help from Yan (the CANDAC data manager), made sure that the laptops for PEARL-GBS and the UT-GBS are accessible remotely. Data taken from both of these instruments is now being transferred south for archiving. On a less positive note, the PEARL-GBS suntracker continues to have problems even after replacing the motor controllers. Measurements were not impacted, but Kristof will need to verify that the suntracker can operate without error once the PEARL-GBS starts taking direct sun measurements. When not troubleshooting the suntracker, Kristof and Pierre worked on stabilizing the PEARL-GBS Netcam, which is required for direct sun measurements.
Paul started the morning by process some of the PARIS-IR measurement data taken over the last few days. Once the sun began to rise and the suntracker was running Paul switched over to taking solar measurements with PARIS. 24 measurements were taken over the course of the day, though three of them are of little use, one due to the signal intensity sharply dropped off the sun began to set, and the others due to the detectors reaching a saturation point during batch measurements (the beam was blocked as a precaution to prevent any damage to any components). He also spent time checking working out a solution to archiving the PARIS measurement data over the next few weeks with Kaley, Yan and Pierre. Paul plans to spend tomorrow making further solar measurements with PARIS.
As MAESTRO's troubleshooting was taking longer than expected, Gurpreet meanwhile decided to take the suntracker and SPS instrument onto the roof of the Ridge Lab to install them there. The tracker was aligned and afterwards the SPS was mounted on the tracker. Initial testing of the SPS instrument showed promising spectra, but by the time measurements were made the sun was almost set and the tests had to be kept short. He plans to test the tracker and SPS performance tomorrow and will continue work on MAESTRO.
On March 1st, Ghazal and Alexey started their measurements at 20:00. Over the first few hours of measurements the signal was fluctuating, but from 2:00 to 5:30 the signals appear to be strong and consistent. On the evening of March 2nd Pierre, Peter (CANDAC operator), Emily, Alexey (CANDAC operator) and Ghazal went to the Ridge lab. Alexey explained the cleaning procedure for the lenses inside the DIAL laser and helped Ghazal clean them. Afterward, with the help of Alexey, Ghazal injected the gas mixture to the system, while Emily took notes and Pierre pictures of the process.