From: sjnk@apo.nmsu.edu Subject: 24Nov00 51873 SDSS 2.5m Obs Log Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2000 06:12:05 -0700 (MST) Friday Nov 24 2000 Apache Point Observatory SDSS 2.5m Observing Log (MJD 51873) OBSERVING TEAM: =============== Atsuko Nitta Kleinman (APO) Scot Kleinman (APO) Anders Jorgensen (LANL) PT VISITORS: ========= Eric Neilsen (FNAL) THE PLAN: ========= Dark time science. SYNOPSIS FOR NIGHT: =================== We completed 4 plates. (411,433,443,445). Not photometric at start of night. Variable seeing later. Good seeing and good sky too late to switch to imaging effectively. The telescope hit the spectrograph cart, bending the windbaffle and the cart handle. Sorry. TELESCOPE STATUS: ================= Opened: ~17:30, ~22:00 Closed: ~20:00 clouds and potential precipitation. At 30deg in enclosure with cart 2 plate 385 mounted. DIMM: ===== not running. INTERLOCKS: =========== none bypassed. SOFTWARE USED: ============== IOP/SOP: v3_19_1 Watcher: v2_8_6 MCP: v4_3_9 TPM: v2_1_3 AstroDa: 14_34 TCC: 2.4.1 WEATHER SYNOPSIS (see below for hourly data): ============================================= Scattered clouds first part of night, clearing nicely later on. GENERAL COMMENTS (see Problems below for details): ================================================== While fiducializing the telescope at the start of the night, Atsuko could not get the altitude change (before and after an 'f') to be less than 1.8". She filed a PR on it. Sure enough, when we went to our first field, we needed a substantial alt offset to find any stars. Clouds came in thicker around twilight just when we started science exposures on cart 2 plate 385. At 20:30, we noticed CCD01 had a red value for vrd2 with a value of 12.34 with a nominal +/- of 14 +/- 0.6. (Connie wanted these things noted.) During the 22:00 re-opening, we left the cart with a cartridge under the telescope and proceeded to crush the windbaffle on the cart handle while we lowered the telescope to open the building. The cartridge appears ok, but the cart handle is bent and the windbaffle is pushed up a bit where it hit. Sorry. After we switched to cartridge 7 and wentToField -gflat, the gflat appeared ok, but subsequent gcams did not. We had to exit SOP and start again to get things to recover. We filed a PR. By 02:00 or so, the 3.5m was reporting 1.2-1.3" seeing (just on the border of the switch criteria) and the sky appeared photometric, but our seeing was 2.5" about 1 hour over, so we decided to proceed with spectroscopy. Our initial seeing then was in the range of 1.7 - 2.3". It went up about 0.6" or more a little thereafter then back down - highly variable. At 03:29 we got an ion pump pressure critical error. There were no watcher red lights, though. A cc imstat reported: ION_PUMP_PR 0.04 # MICROTORR We had another error around 05:00 when cc imstat also reported a 0.04 reading. After the last plate was done (443), we still had some time before twilight, so we took an extra exposure and spent some time testing some of Scot's modifications to instChange in response to several recent PRs. The modifications seem to work in that the -cartridge default now actually works and the -imager option moves the rotator to -0:18. It will now also move in azimuth when the intial altitude is above 70deg, but there still appears a problem probably in gotoPosition - if the telescope overshoots its position, it will think it never got there and will keep checking status. Perhaps we want to add an additional loop like has the position stopped changing and am I within some larger tolerance away. Both times I tested, it went first to 90.05 degress and got stuck; a second test, it went to 70.05 deg and got stuck. I checked in my changes to scan.tcl along with a note in the log saying above. Robert??? Things now seem to be fine now over 70deg alt, but the overshooting problem is probably what caused us to have troubles periodically with instChange. ROBERT????? (I tested with the -verbose option which made debugging easy- thanks!) endNight -doSpectro ran successfully with tape JL3129 to ship. DATA ACQUISITION (see IOP/SOP output below): =========================================== IMAGING: -------- Run Type --- ---- 1878 doghouse bias SPECTROSCOPY: ------------- Exposure Type -------- ---- 7143 -init -bias Cart 2 plate 385 ---------------- at 18:03, we acquired these calib offsets: (getclock ~975114316) CalAzOff 0.005228 CalAltOff 0.003780 CalAngOff 0.000000 Initial focus=425 7144-7145 preCalibs (SOP asked for a -0.020 scaleChange which we implemented) 7146 science 900s (the only good one) 7147 science 900s 7148 science 900s 7149 science 900s (this one isn't bad either) 7150 science 900s NOT DONE Cart 8 plate 411 ---------------- 22:19 (975129528) - required offsets: CalAzOff 0.005525 CalAltOff 0.001151 CalAngOff 0.000000 7151-7152 preCalibs 7153 science 900s 7154 science 900s 7155 science 900s 7156 smear 7157-7158 postCalibs DONE Cart 7 Plate 433 ---------------- 7159 -init -bias 7160 -init -bias 7161-7162 preCalibs 7163 science 900s 7164 science 900s 7165 science 900s 7166 science 900s 7167 science 900s 7168 smear 7169-7170 postCalibs DONE Cart 6 plate 445 --------------- 7171-7172 preCalibs 7173 science 900s 7174 science 900s 7175 science 900s 7176 smear 7177-7178 postCalibs DONE Cart 1 plate 443 ---------------- 7179-7180 preCalibs 7181 science 900s 7182 science 900s 7183 science 900s 7184 science 900s (why not? twilight a comin') 7185 smear 7186-7187 postCalibs DONE MIRRORS: ======== PRIMARY MIGS: ------------- MIGS SHOULD BE Axial A= 0.0270 Axial B= -0.0270 Axial C= 0.0070 Transverse D= 0.2189 Lateral E= 1.8984 Lateral F= 0.3984 SECONDARY MIGS Axial A= -1.6779 Axial B= -1.6089 Axial C= -1.6369 Transverse D= 0.2280 MIRROR STATUS 0 3 I PrimCmdMount=4900., -2500., 200., -6650., -100., -350. 0 3 I PrimActMount=4900., -2500., 200., -6650., -100., -350. 0 3 I PrimOrient=0.00, -4.56, 6.14, 325.99, 240.03 0 3 I PrimStatus=65537, 65537, 65537, 65537, 65537, 65537 0 3 I Received=" 1 lateral links (0 disengaged, 1 engaged)" 0 3 I SecCmdMount=2011550., 2011550., 2011550., 7100., 8300. 0 3 I SecActMount=2011459., 2011578., 2011383., 7100., 8300. 0 3 I SecOrient=1596.17, 0.05, 0.03, 0.02, -280.51 0 3 I SecStatus=65537, 65537, 65537, 65537, 65537 Focus: 425(rel) 1596(Abs) Temp: -0.6 Altitude: 53 FOCUS LOG: ========== M1 Piston M2 Piston Temp Wind Time Inst setmir TCC setmir Az Alt C Dir MPH filt FWHM " (rel) (abs) 01:50 spec 988 50 366 112 69 -1 27 21 gdr 2.5 03:20 spec -988 100 416 151 69 -1.6 32 20 gdr 2.1 04:00 spec 0 100 1225 171 74 -1.9 26 21 gdr 1.7 04:38 spec 0 100 1226 195 73 -2.0 22 20 gdr 2.0 LN2 SCHEDULE: ============= We swapped both dewars around 06:00 and left the spectrographs on auto-fill. PROBLEMS: ========= An attempt to update the plate inventory database resulted in errors like: Table user_exposure, attribute exposure, value 7151 not unique while executing "error_old $arg" (procedure "error" line 4) invoked from within "error "Table $table, attribute $name, value $val not unique"" (procedure "insertVerify" line 35) invoked from within "insertVerify $table $name [lindex $pair 1]" (procedure "recordInsert" line 10) invoked from within "recordInsert $table $createargs" (procedure "tmlProc" line 57) invoked from within "tmlProc" WEATHER DATA: ============= Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust DIMM Sky Precip. 17:01 30 13 15 358 (N) 297 18:01 30 7 9 27 (NNE) 241 19:01 31 16 15 12 (NNE) 354 20:01 31 14 13 12 (NNE) 368 21:01 31 13 19 30 (NNE) 231 22:01 32 9 17 21 (NNE) 582 23:01 30 14 13 14 (NNE) 476 00:01 30 12 22 17 (NNE) 525 01:01 30 15 19 27 (NNE) 459 02:01 30 15 21 29 (NNE) 359 03:01 29 16 22 22 (NNE) 403 04:01 29 15 21 31 (NNE) 420 05:01 29 16 20 21 (NNE) 434 06:01 28 16 18 15 (NNE) 426 [pmt]cl = partly, mostly, totally cloudy DATA LOGS FROM IOP/SOP: =======================