Subject: 2.5m obslog 9908020 (MJD 51411)
Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 05:12:29 -0600 (MDT)
From: hayes@apo.nmsu.edu
			Friday August 20, 1999
		              (MJD 51411)
                   Apache Point Observatory SDSS 2.5m
                           Observing Log
Tonight's Observing Team:
		Ellyne Kinney (APO)
                Jeffrey Hayes (APO)
		Stephanie Snedden (APO)
                Scott Burles (UC)
		Bob Nichol (CMU)
We did not manage to open until 1:30 am MDT as we initially had high humidity,
clouds and lightening.  But by 1:30 am, the above conditions managed to
clear out to a point where opening became reasonable.
Like last night, the wind was gusty (20 mph) from the SE.
The 2 spectrographs, cartridge 1 and the corrector, along with the
petals gives a counterweight voltage of 500.
While opening up, we had the telescope at about 20 degrees in ALT, and when
we commanded ALT to 80 degrees through the MCP, we had a run-away down to
9 degrees before an e-stop was hit.  After we reset the amps, the telescope
behaved fine.
On tap for tonight, if possible, get data for a focus vs altitute model and
test "sop" code.
Our first order of business was to home the primary mirror now that the
galil is back in communication.  This was done and finished up by 2:50 am.
We then slewed to the centre of plate 172 at 325.7, 0, found a star in fiber
10 and started to test Scott's script that performs a spiral search for guide
stars in "sop".  This we did, and the script works fine.  Note that focus is
now at +3000.  We then slewed to 15, 80 to see if the pointing will work in that
part of the sky.  Again, we found a star down fiber 10 on the first try --
demonstrating that the pointing model are working well.
We then tried to guide for a short time at this position (i.e. off equator)
to make sure that the maths were done right.
The spectrographs warming up caused us to have to cut the guiding experiments
short - we filled spectro1 and spectro2.
Note:  The control box for the building motion in the East direction has an
eyehook that is becoming quite loose.  It may come apart this weekend if
we do a lot of opening/closing of the building.
We called it a night at 5 am MDT.
Jeffrey