Subject: 2.5m obslog 19990915 (MJD 51437)
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 06:24:51 -0600 (MDT)
From: hayes@apo.nmsu.edu
			Wednesday September 15, 1999
                   Apache Point Observatory SDSS 2.5m
                           Observing Log
                           (MJD 51437)
Observing Team:
		Jeffrey Hayes (APO)
		Ellyne Kinney (APO)
                Connie Rockosi (UC)
		Scott Burles (UC)
                Robert Lupton (PU)
                Scot Kleinmann (APO)
On for tonight, imaging if the weather is good, and spectroscopy for the rest
of the evening.  The idea is to obtains scans in the FASTT fields for the
astrometrists using the imager and more guiding/spectroscopy.
We could not open up immediately due to the cloud cover.
We started the TPM log at about 19:00.  The all sky camera was started at
20:30.  We had increasing patchiness of the cloud cover from 17:00 onwards,
with the humidity varying from 54% to 75%, and back over roughly
2.5 hours.
We completed the pre-flight check-out of the telescope, set fiducials, &c.,
with Scot Kleinmann, the new Observer, by 18:30.
Connie was taking frames with the imager when at about 20:15 the Archiver
crashed.  The VME crates were rebooted, and at 20:45, we were back on the
air.  The sky camera and the DIMM were opened and started at 21:45.  The
seeing was on the order 1.7'' to 2''.
We opened at 22:20 as the clouds and lightening cleared away.  We went to
intrument change to allow Connie to install the shims and then we were
ready to go to the meridian, equator to start a scan.  We started at 23:30.
Unfortunately, the cloud cover moved in at the same time, allowing us to
obtain a number of cloud flats.  At 23:55 we started to see stars, but this
was an intermittant phenomina. due to the quickly moving cloud cover.  The
humidity stayed at about 64% throughtout.   Seeing stayed at over 1.5''.
To get the rotator "backwards" we set the rotator through the TCC at 270
degrees in object co-ordinates.
From 00:30 we tracked on the (meridian,equator) for roughly 1 hour, and then
at 01:30 we tracked at twice siderial, with the rotator -180 degrees from
it's initial position for another hour.
At 02:40 we moved back to the current (meridian,equator) to scan on a FASTT
field and put the rotator back to 89.858 degrees in mount co-ordinates.
By the time we reset the line scan rate, and tweaked the rotator, we missed
FASTT field B (actually we overlapped fields B and C).  We started a scan
on FASTT field C proper at 04:30.
At 03:00 the seeing got to under 1.5'', but the humidity started to climb, so
that by 04:00 it was at 80% and hovered there.  Water started to condense
on objects at 05:10, so we ended the drift on FASTT field C and closed up.
After we had closed the building and were filling SP1, we had a rotator
run-away.  The TCC was not running at this time.  Hitting an e-stop stopped
the run-away, but after the stop was taken out, it required a reboot of the
MCP to make it functional again.  The MCP then proceeded to work after that
point.
LN2 schedule:  SP1:  23;10; 06:00
               SP2:  22:15; not filled
               Imager dewar: 06:10
We finished up at 06:35.
Ellyne et Jeffrey