Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 04:28:55 -0600 (MDT)
From: hayes@apo.nmsu.edu
Subject: obslog for 990522 (MJD 51321)
			Saturday May 22, 1999
                   Apache Point Observatory SDSS 2.5m
                           Observing Log
Observing Team:
		Jeffrey Hayes (APO)
		Ellyne Kinney (APO)
                Jim Gunn (PU)
                Bob Nichol (CMU)
		Russell Owen (UW) -- remote
Weather:  Initially partly cloudy with moderate dust.  Winds: ~15 mph steady
and gusts up to 25 mph.
On tap tonight, use the pointing model from last night and
conduct guiding tests for the spectrographs.
We had French's help in installing the corrector lens in the late
afternoon.  It was installed on the telescope, just before the
thunderstorm was upon us.  Some of us involved had our first
monsoon-style close-up.
We opened at about 9 pm MDT, but we had to install the cartridge at this
time due to the thunderstorm and the high dust/humidity afterwards kept us
from doing much else.  The CW were set of 340 for the cartridge + corrector
combination.
We got on the air at 11:15 pm MDT.  The spectroscopic folks gained control
of the telescope via "sop", and managed to test some of their code: slewing
the telescope; the task STARPATTERN, that will automatically generate a
instrument block for the plate; and OBJTOCALIB that will take an object
offset and convert it to a calibration offset.  These all seemed to work.
We also tried to get stars down the fibers but clouds rolled in.  We tried to
wait the clouds out, but more come in, and we decided, like the 3.5 m
people to close up at 12:05 am MDT.
MCP code worked okay, until we decided to put the telescope to stow in order
to close up: while slewing from about AZ=30 to stow at AZ = 120:45, the
telescope stopped moving at about 60 degrees.  A sequence of 'H', 'S', 'H',
and then an 'M' started it on its way again to complete the slew.  This
might be due to the fact that we are running on only 2 amps for the AZ
windscreen?
The opening values for the before/after setting of the fiducials via the
AZ   118:59:59:994   before
     118:59:53:827   after
ALT  12:59:59:999    before
     12:59:51:804    after
ROT  03:59:59:995    before
     04:00:05:538    after
As we closed reasonably quickly due to the increasing cloud cover, we did
not take closing fiducials.
We reopened at about 2:30 am MDT, but by the time we were on the sky at
about 2:50 am, the clouds came back in.  We waited 15 minutes.  The clouds
persisted, and by 3:05 am, we decided to close again.  At 3:15 am, everybody
agreed that the onset of twilight was close enough that it would preclude much
useful work from getting done -- assuming the clouds opened up in the first
place.  The clouds never cleared by 4:30 am, and so we called it a night.
Ellyne and Jeffrey