Subject: 2.5m obs log 05 June 2000 (mjd 51701) Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000 05:01:00 -0600 (MDT) From: hayes@apo.nmsu.edu (Jeffrey Hayes) [mail to: obs-report-25m@apo.nmsu.edu include MJD in subject] Monday June 5 2000 Apache Point Observatory SDSS 2.5m Observing Log (MJD 51701) OBSERVING TEAM: =============== Jeffrey Hayes (APO) Ellyne Kinney (APO) Atsuko Nitta Kleinman (APO) Eric Neilsen (JHU) PT VISITORS: ========= THE PLAN: ========= What we can given the weather. Hopefully spectroscopy or focal plane mapping. SYNOPSIS FOR NIGHT: =================== Lots of clouds and precip in the basin and the Organ Mts. At 01:00 we decided to open up, but keep an eye out for any of the western weather which may come at us. We loaded Cart 5 / plate 347 and obtained the same style of error message as reported last night in the log. As this is twice in a row it hath been filed as a bug report and thus made official. TELESCOPE STATUS: ================= In stow at 30d with cart 9 on for tomorrow. DIMM: ----- At 1:30 greater than 2.5''. We have a repeat of last night. INTERLOCKS: =========== None bypassed. SOFTWARE USED: ============== IOP/SOP: v3_16_2 Watcher: v2_8_2 MCP: v4_2_4 TPM: v1_0_8 AstroDa: 14_28 TCC: 2.2.9 WEATHER SYNOPSIS (see below for hourly data): ============================================= Cloudly till roughly 01:00, then clear till 04:20, but with rising humidity after 03:30. GENERAL COMMENTS (see Problems below for details): ================================================== Before Dark: gimg0123.fits -- looks like the edges are not sharp at all in histogram scale. Le soir: We opened at 01:00 with relatively clear skys and after the loadCart error managed to get on the field in short order. We obtained stars down the guide fibres almost immediately, but found that the focus (set at -200) was somewhat ghastly. We are certain that this was due to the fact that we could not run the fans in the afternoon/evening due to the rain and high humidity. Setting focus to 0 gave us good images (i.e. round stars). We did not have to slew to an FK5 star in order to get stars down fibres. The offsets used here were (-0.0014,0.0022) (az,alt). Because the telescope was not in thermal balance, we had very bad luck in getting guiding to work in anything like an effecient manner; the image scale changed quite dramatically (better that 10%) in only 15 minutes), as the telescope thermalised. The scale would change from 0.023 to 0.001 in the order of a 2 or 3 guider frames. We appeared to be getting rotator oscillations from one position to another as 3 of the guide stars in the lower right of the guide frame would never centre up properly (fibres 3 and 4). We also noted that sop did not count-down the time remaining in the science integration. At the end of this first science integration we waited to see the results of SoS to confirm what we saw visually on the monitors: very low S/N for the 900s; a (S/N)**2 = 2 (!!). At this point, we realised that the law of diminishing returns was coming into play, and so we decided to try and complete plate 353 from last night. During the cartridge change we could not get the telescope to zenith. It would abort and brake the ALT axis, as one would expect when one hit a soft limit. This behaviour was evident at 89:57. We then decided to refiducialise the ALT axis and found that the axis was out by 9''. At this point the MCP froze up and we had to reboot (sigh). After the refiducialisation, we successfully made it to zenith and swapped cartridges. We then were on the field by 03:20. The offsets of centre the guide stars were (0.0008,0.0003). Again, due to the fact that the telescope was not thermally stable, we had a very hard time in getting a stable image scale and getting the guide stars pulled into the centres of the fibres. The upshot is we cannot obtain good guiding if the telescope is not thermalised with the consequence that the spectra obtained will have very low S/N. Unfortunately, we still did not get the canonical (S/N)**2 of 80 for the plate still, and with both twilight coming and very high humidity (87%, above closure limits), we closed for the night at 04:20. We did run endNight $mjd -doSpectro -doTpm for the sake of the 2 spectra on plate 353. Tape JL 2907 is to be shipped. DATA ACQUISITION (see IOP/SOP output below): =========================================== IMAGING: -------- Run Type --- ---- 1543 bias SPECTROSCOPY: ------------- Exposure Type -------- ---- 4349 bias 4350 bias -- init (aborted sop session) Cart 5 / plate 347 ------------------ 4351 bias - init 4352 pre flat 4353 pre arc 1 4354 pre arc 2 4355 science 900s Cart 6 / plate 353 Still not done! ------------------ 4356 pre flat 4357 pre arc 1 4358 pre arc 2 4359 science 900s s/n ~ 16 4360 science 900s s/n ~ 7(!) 4361 post flat 4362 post arc 1 4363 post arc 2 4364 diamondpt az 1 4365 diamondpt az 2 4366 diamondpt alt 1 4367 diamondpt alt 2 MIRRORS: ======== PRIMARY: -------- MIGS SHOULD BE Axial A= 1.9284 1.9284 Axial B= 0.5589 0.5594 Axial C= 0.5574 0.5579 Transverse D= 0.3729 0.3744 Lateral E= 1.9065 1.9065 Lateral F= 0.4074 0.4074 GALILS Commanded: -1850., -10850., -7950., 4200., 7350., 7050. Actual: -1850., -10850., -7950., 4200., 7350., 7050. SETMIR VALUES primDesOrient: primOrient: SECONDARY: ---------- Focus: 0 Temp: 12.7 C Altitude: 54 MIGS Axial A= -1.2339 Axial B= -1.1999 Axial C= -1.2079 Transverse D= 0.0189 GALILS Commanded: 2827850., 2814950., 2804700., -1850., -6350. Actual: 2828137., 2815204., 2803992., -1850., -6350. SETMIR VALUES secDesOrient: secOrient: 2235.01, 5.33, -5.08, 49.84, -32.98 FOCUS LOG: ========== M1 Piston M2 Piston Temp Wind Time Inst setmir TCC setmir Az Alt C Dir MPH filt FWHM " 01:30 SP 0 2235.01 -31 54 12.7 SES 3 2 03:10 SP 50 1198.46 207 57 9.9 SE 10 3 LN2 SCHEDULE: ============= Spectros filled at 04:30. Imager dewar changed at 04:30. PROBLEMS: ========= WEATHER DATA: ============= Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust DIMM Sky Precip. 16:01 57 35 12 86 (E) 526 17:01 63 32 16 18 (NNE) 650 18:01 58 36 7 54 (NE) 706 19:01 58 36 8 58 (ENE) 567 20:01 55 37 3 84 (E) 721 21:01 55 37 6 82 (E) 772 mcl 22:01 56 36 1 255 (WSW) 787 mcl 23:01 53 37 5 128 (SE) 717 mcl 00:01 55 36 4 181 (S) 783 mcl 01:01 52 39 3 112 (ESE) 818 2.5 clr 02:01 54 36 0 256 (WSW) 661 clr 03:01 49 44 8 125 (SE) 1357 3.0 pcl 04:01 49 44 11 122 (ESE) 1381 [pmt]cl = partly, mostly, totally cloudy DATA LOGS FROM IOP/SOP: =======================