Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 09:30:05 -0700 From: "s. a. snedden" Subject: 2.5-m Obs Log (MJD 51581) SUNDAY FEBRUARY 6, 2000 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY SDSS 2.5m OBSERVING LOG (MJD 51581) Observing team: Scot Kleinman (APO)--first shift Atsuko Kleinman (APO)--first shift Jeffrey Hayes (APO)--second shift Stephanie Snedden (APO)--third shift Bing Chen (JHU) - PT Craig Loomis - by phone (APO) Visitors: Connie Rockosi (UC) Andrew Connolly (UP) David Schlegel (PU) Adrian Pope (CMU) David Johnston (UC) Mark Subbarao (UC) Robert Lupton (PU) Jim Annis - by phone Software: iop v3_8_0 switched to 3_8_1 at 17:30 watcher v2_6_0 switched to 2_6_1 at 17:30 MCP v3_1_1 Plan for tonight: Let the observers run SOP and test "normal" operations. During the afternoon, Scot and Jim Annis worked on the archive system, replacing the Ciprico SCSI controller for id1 with a spare. The one taken out had yellow tag#522029 and white tag#028271. The replacement board has a yellow tag#522024 and white tag#028266. However, the id1 still reports 0 tape drives, so the fix didn't work. Experts are being called. At 20:00 Jeff and Scot checked the SCSI connections. id3-2 then came back in a normal state, but the id1 drives are still not seen. French also worked on the telescope today, finding a loose MIG-B power connector, causing the problems noticed with it. He also lubricated the flat field screens so they perform better and quieter and he found the NE flat field lamp takes about 40s to turn on the first time, then comes on more quickly after that. After an hour or so interval however (as usual during observing), the next start-up of the lamp is again around 40s. sdsshost was having some problems which Craig fixed from home. Afterwards (around 3pm), we rebooted the photo and astro crates, the guider mac and the MCP/TPM. TPM logging (tpm-51581.dat) was started around 17:00. We could not get the FF lamp #1 (what French calls the NE lamp) to light at all now. French came in and swapped the power supply and it behaved fine afterwards. French finished at 19:30. For the rest of the night, the flat field lamps behaved well. In between all this, we also looked at the tape drives again based on Jim Annis's suggestion that some cables might have loosened during the tape drive swapping of yesterday. This doesn't explain why id3-2 is now flashing lights at us, but we checked anyhow and could not find anything loose. We pressed on everything anyway and set things back up. id1 still reported archNTapes=0, so nothing was fixed. We mounted cartridge 2, plate 256 and tried to guide with Atsuko at the controls under the guidance of the SOP team. Lots of flailing getting the guide stars. After deciding to mount the next cartridge, we discovered the rotation axis was 45 arcmin off. We do not understand why, since we set the fiducials fine earlier. We re-fiducilized, however, and got the MCP to agree with the tape-marked fiducials on the rotator. Finding the guide stars with the next catrtidge (1 -plate 316) was much simpler. *** Note to observers for tomorrow night: Jim Gunn would like us to check the rotator the next time we set the fiducials. 1) set the rotator fiducial as usual 2) send the rotator to 0 degrees, exactly. 3) check that the tape marks on the rotator line up. We should be able to see an error of a few arcmin. At 01:15, cartridge 3 - plate 179 was installed. Robert's system status display says that cartridge 3 is cartridge 2, so it is not getting the right bits. At 01:30, TCC track commands would not work. We had to close down all sessions and restart the TCC in order to slew the telescope. We had a little trouble acquiring the field...went to a nearby fk5 star, did some offsets, and found the star. We then went back and acquired the field fairly easily. New guider software was to be tested. While setting up binning, sdsshost crashed (at 03:05). We waited to see if it would spontaneously reboot. It did not, so finally we called Craig (thanks yet again, Craig) and woke him, Karen and the cats up. With his guidance we safely rebooted 'host. It was then time to go to cartridge 5, plate 295. We mounted it at 04:30. The field was acquired right away and a pre-exposure calibration sequence was run. The binning and nodding routines were tested succesfully. Three 15 minute science exposures were then taken, followed by a postCalib sequence. The second and third exposures were taken during morning twilight. endNight 51581 -doSpectro was run. The copy to tape went okay, but endNight failed during the scp to FNAL. Tape 1817 was put on the shelf for shipping. New tapes were put in the drives. LN2: The spectro dewars were filled around 16:30 and topped off at 17:30. The last fill of the shift was at 07:00. The imager dewar was swapped out at 09:45. Mirror positions --------------- focus=0: prim: 05900, -3300, 50, 4200, 14600, 14150 sec: -230910, -244150, -254122, -4750, -9500 focus=1400: prim: 5900, -3300, 50, 4200, 14600, 14150 sec: 1532827, 1519592, 1510307, -4750, -9400 In spite of French's work today, we still were not TPM recording the MiGs. Interlocks: none bypassed Weather: Skies ranged from mostly clear to partly cloudy. Winds were out of the north, ranging from 5-20 mph. Relative humidity was at 30%. Dust went from 70-30 particles/ft^3. DIMM seeing fluctuated from 1.5 to 2" (FWHM) early, then improved to 1", however a visual check did not look that good, and the guide star FWHM's were all over 2".