Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 04:37:51 -0600 (MDT)
From: hayes@apo.nmsu.edu
Subject: obslog for 990524 (MJD 51323)
			Monday May 24, 1999
                   Apache Point Observatory SDSS 2.5m
                           Observing Log
Observing Team:
		Jeffrey Hayes (APO)
		Ellyne Kinney (APO)
                Jim Gunn (PU)
		Adrien Pope (CMU)
		Francisco Castander (UC)
                Bob Nichol (CMU)
		Russell Owen (UW) -- remote
Weather:  Rain to start (2 hail storms).  Winds: ~15 mph steady
and gusts up to 20 mph.   Low dust, but fairly high humidity.
On tap tonight, a second try for last night: use the pointing model
from 20 May and conduct guiding tests for the spectrographs.
The CW were still set of 340 for the cartridge + corrector combination.
At about 10:15 pm MDT the humidity went down, but then the clouds came in from
the West.  At roughly midnight, the clouds disappeared.
We had a number of problems with getting the MCP going tonight --
The details are as follows:
o I made a successful move from ALT stow to 35d, but was logged out of the
MCP while setting the AZ fiducial.  A restart of the telnet session did
not work, so a reboot was required.
o I the tried to set the AZ fiducial after the reboot, but the axis was
not responsive.  An Amp reset and the H, S, H sequence, and then the M
got the axis to move.  I then set the rotator fiducial, and was setting
the ALT fiducial, when I was logged out of the MCP again.
o on this 3rd try I was logged out of the MCP while trying to set the
AZ fiducial.
o on the 4th reconnect via telnet, the MCP menu froze after I tried to get a
move in AZ (again, trying to get a fiducial).  This required a full reboot
of the MCP to get rid of the freeze.  Note, all these 4 telnet logouts were
done via "telnet sdssmcp".  In the last try I used "telnet t-g-sdss=2 3700"
and managed to get the fiducials.  Note too that I could not get the
AZ to move after an Amp reset, but had to issue an Amp reset + the H, S, H
sequence.
The opening before/after MCP readings for the fiducials were:
AZ  123:00:00:964 before
    123:00:07:322 after
ALT 14:00:00:014  before
    13:44:07:718  after (!?) -- yes, not a typo.
ROT 3:59:59:995   before
    3:59:58:066   after
With fiducials set, we went to sop and TCC control at about 1:30 am MDT.
We were using cartridge two and field L (241.25,0) to do guiding tests.
We used the new sop command to slew to a nearby FK5 star (243.58642,
-3.69431 J2000.0).  The star was very out of focus.  We did a focus
sequence and the final value for focus was 4050.  We then saved a
few images on either side of focus (3250, 3500, 4050, 4550 and 4800).
These images are save in /data/spectro/guider with the name foc_xxxx.fits
(where xxxx is the focus value).  Once this was done we centered the star
in fiber 10 using offset calibs in the TCC.  The needed offset was -0.003,
0.002.  We then slewed to field center by using the sop command starInFiber
and the coordinates for the star expected in fiber 10 (241.1306175,-0.098711).
Once there we used the command starPattern with 1.5" offsets and an exposure
time of 15 seconds to  get the input images for the scripts that create the
instrument block, computeFiberAngles and correctInstBlock.  The results were
written and loaded with the commands writeSmallBlock and putInstBlock.
At this point we turn control of the telescope to Russell Owen so he could
test the instrument block we created.  During this process the humidity came
back up and we had to close at 3:30 am MDT.
This we proceeded to do, but as we were slewing back to AZ
stow under MCP control, we noticed that the ALT axis moved from
roughly 55d to 21:45 at the same time.  The ALT stopped moving when
it hit the 21:45 point.  We continued the slew into stow and close up.
One last thing to note.  After one regains control of the MCP from either
sop or the TCC, the MCP values for the AZ, ALT and ROT are very wrong --
values on the range of -7150d to +4000d in each of the axes.  These values
become rational once one crosses a fiducial.
We called it a night at 4:35 am MDT.
Jeffrey and Ellyne