Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 07:11:39 -0600 From: Dan Long Subject: 2.5m obslog 991005 ( MJD 51457 ) TUESDAY OCTOBER 5, 1999 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY SDSS 2.5m OBSERVING LOG Observering team: Dan Long (APO) Scot Kleinman (APO) Scott Burles (UC) Connie Rockosi (UC) Jim Gunn (PU) Tonight's plan was to obtain spectroscopic data for the first half of the night. We got data on plates 188, and 190. The plan for the second half was to collect engineering data with the imager. The imager checked out nicely. Focus sweeps were obtain in both forward and backward drift scanning. There was enough time left in the night to get some science data on stripe 76. Another productive clear night! Astroda was changed to version 14_1 and iop and sop were rebuilt. Iop is based on the current stable version and sop is the development version. The primary mirror went into oscillation once tonight. It was when we stowed the telescope ( I left the axial actuators at -80000 ( galil ) and collimate off. ) EndNight was run for mjd 51455. The scp was still not successful. The error this time was due to the proper key not being on sdss.fnal.gov. The tape for mjd 51455 is ready to be shipped. Endnight did not work for 51454 due to /usrdevel on host getting full. I didn't have time to get that sorted tonight, so I will try again tomorrow. We had trouble with the servers dying. The watcher was disconnected most of the night. I don't know if this had anything to due with the version upgrade/rebuild. Connie tried some things to get them going and has filed a bug report. We started the night with cartridge 2, plate 188. Five science exposures were taken. Seeing during this time was 1.5 to 2.5 arcseconds. At about 23:00 we switched to cartridge 1, plate 190. Four science exposures were taken with this one. Seeing was slightly better here with 1.5 to 2.0 arcseconds fwhm. The spectro mechanicals only had to be power cycled once tonight. It was spectro 1. At about 01:00 we switched to the imager. There was some trouble getting it mounted. The lift wouldn't raise it the last quarter inch or so. It wasn't catching on anything. The force maxed out at around 1350 lb, about a hundred pounds short of normal maximum. Backing off and trying again eventually worked on the third try. The altitude was balanced with a slight bottom heavy bias with the counterweights fully up and the blue weights removed from the altitude drive disks. Once mounted, we set up on the equator and meridian. Focus sweep data was taken. Best focus was about -1600. The rotator offset from 90 mount was -.152. Next a backwards scan was done. Again, focus sweep data was taken. The rotator offset (using the inst block this time) was .02 deg. This was similar to the offset from scans last dark run, so the instrument block was modified to add this offset. The last hour of the night was spent filling in stripe 76. The south strip was done with a starting lambda of -110. DIMM was showing seeing around 1.5 to 2.0 arcseconds for most of the imaging tonight. MIRROR NUMBERS Primary: setmir: 0 -27.4 7.8 427 1495 galil: 6400, -3350, -450, 11050, 7350, 7050 linear gauges 1 = 1.9270 2 = 0.5600 3 = 0.5585 5 = 1.9050 6 = 0.4075 4 = 2.7730 7 = 2.8150 8 = 2.9820 Secondary: ( inst=spectro focus=1800 alt=43.5 deg ) setmir: 1593 -113.2 45 0 262.2 galil: 1820431, 1973008, 2229033, -16763, -14122 TPM data was logged for most of the night in "/mcptpm/tpm-51457". The imager is on the telescope. Nitrogen notes: Both spectrographs were filled at 18:30 ( once open ) and again at about 06:30. EndNight -doSpectro -doImager for MJD 51457 was started. WEATHER Skies tonight were clear all night. The temperature was in the low 50s. Winds were from the south to southeast at 10 to 20 MPH, humidity was around 50%, and dust counts were 600 to 800. Seeing tonight was between 1.1 and 2.5 arcseconds. Note: The dewpoint sensor is acting flaky again. Twice tonight it reported a dewpoint depression of less than 2.0 C when there was no condensation on anything. Dan