From: sjnk@apo.nmsu.edu Subject: 2.5m ObsLog 16Feb01 51957 Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 06:07:45 -0700 (MST) Friday Feb 16 2001 Apache Point Observatory SDSS 2.5m Observing Log (MJD 51957) OBSERVING TEAM: =============== Atsuko Nitta Kleinman (APO) Scot Kleinman (APO) Bing Chen (JHU) PT VISITORS: ========= Jurek Krzesinski (KPU: Poland) THE PLAN: ========= Dark time science. SYNOPSIS FOR NIGHT: =================== We finished 4 plates and got another partially done. We continued to have occasional V1_R_check errors and the telescope aborted during a track a few more times (this happened last clear night, too). TELESCOPE STATUS: ================= Opened: 18:45 Doors Opened: 18:30 Fans on: 18:00 Closed: 05:45 Cartridge 7 mounted. DIMM: ===== Not operational INTERLOCKS: =========== None bypassed SOFTWARE USED: ============== IOP/SOP: v3_29_4 Watcher: v2_8_14 MCP: v4_5_1 TPM: v2_2_2 AstroDa: 14_34 TCC: 2.5.0b2 tccMon: v1_5 sdssProcedures: v1_11 WEATHER SYNOPSIS (see below for hourly data): ============================================= Clouds and seeing variable at start of night, settling down to just bad seeing most of the night. GENERAL COMMENTS (see Problems below for details): ================================================== During opening fiducializing, the MCP died as we tried to move the telescope to 90deg. We could not telnet to sdssmcp, so we rebooted it. Since we were in an unknown position at the time, the MCP came back up with bad telescope readings - we used the clinometer to get the telescope to 90deg and the pin in for an instrument change. We then refiducialized without further incident. The watcher continued to give us MCP communication timeout errors. We saw these last night too and filed a PR on it tonight. We found the flat field screen unplugged, but plugged it back in and carried on fine. First up, cart 7 plate 541. We needed to do an fk5 to find our guide stars. The first exposure went nowhere- it finished, but never read out! I think it was because I forgot the grabInst. At 21:14, we noticed our guide stars were gone, so issued a pauseStare and re-acquired the field. The watcher showed alt and rot inhibits due to bad V1_R_checks. resumeStare didn't work this time, though. It failed with a: sp1> resumeStare 900 Changing exposure time to 900 seconds appending ALTER Error: can't read "scheduled(wait_for_endStare)": no such element in array So we did a endStare -abort and a new doNextScience. I suppose we could have just done an endStare without the -abort. This happened again at 21:52. The telescope was nearly pointed straight up at the time. Is this due to too fast tracking rates? It took several axis inits and gotoFields to recover things again. We finally could go to the field, but could not see any guide stars. We tried an fk5 next and found it quite a bit out of the fiber, but got it centered and wentToField to finally find guide stars again. Once we got onto the field, the guiding was not converging. Only the central stars appeared in their apertures. The rest were there, but substantially off. The Alt,Az,Rot at this time was: True AZ -89.37 True ALT 86.31 True ROT 92.91 After many iterations, things started to look better, but there were still several guide stars well outside of the simulated science fiber aperture. We applied a requested -0.006 scaleChange, which didn't help all that much. This time a resumeStare 0 seemed to work fine. I charged the downtime to MCP Problem in titrax, not knowing who, really, to blame. Once the exposure was finished, it didn't look worth continuing, so we went to the next plate (cart 6: plate 502). SoS got behind due to full disk space, so we fixed that, but had a lagging SoS for quite some time. Based on the (S/N)^2 of the last plate, we did 5 exposures for plate 502 which apparently were more than enough! Oh well- too much signal to noise... Around 12:30, 3.5m seeing got good and the skys were more or less clear. With instrument change time and the moon rising at 2:50, we kept spectroing. Conditions were variable earlier in the night, too. By 1:30, both our and the 3.5m seeing had increased by ~.5". While getting cart 8 off the rack, the manipulator went to very slow motion, then stopped all together an inch or so too high to put the cart on the Lindy cart. We opened the main control box on the manipulator and set things to stop and got the manipulator to go down. We later had problems unlatching the cartridge on the telescope, but latched the new one fine. Did we have a temporary air pressure event? At 02:13, setting up on cart 8 plate 493, the telescope AGAIN stopped tracking. The interlocks display was all GO. A couple axis inits and a new gotoField and all was well again. Twice tonight (including setting up cart 8), we issued a startGuider command which took one frame, then stopped. A new stopGuider and startGuider command sequence got things going again, but why? Next up was cart 4 plate 304. There was NO light in guide fiber 3. We declared this plate done. EndNight finished succsessfully. DATA ACQUISITION (see IOP/SOP output below): =========================================== IMAGING: -------- Run Type --- ---- 2116 bias in doghouse SPECTROSCOPY: ------------- time exp int(s) type comment ---- --- ----- ---- ------- 00:54 8748 0.0 bias -bias -init Cart 7 Plate 541 ---------------- offset: Time Cart Plate getclock Az Alt Rot Scale 19:42 7 541 982377770 0.002476 0.002968 -0.041072 1.000000 exposures: UT Exp Time flavor comment 00:54 8748 0.0 bias {{-bias -init}} ------ sequence 8749, plate 541 ------- 02:45 8749 10.0 flat pre-flat 02:47 8750 2.0 arc pre-arc 03:39 8751 900.0 target science science science 03:57 8752 901.0 target science 04:15 8753 900.0 target science 04:38 8754 901.0 target {{resumeStare did not work}} science 05:21 8755 902.0 target science 05:27 8756 240.0 smear {{Smear Pattern}} 05:30 8757 10.0 flat post-flat 05:33 8758 2.0 arc post-arc NOT DONE Cart 6 Plate 502 ---------------- offset: Time Cart Plate getclock Az Alt Rot Scale 22:56 6 502 982389406 0.000385 0.000767 0.012518 0.999990 exposures: 05:50 8759 10.0 flat pre-flat 05:52 8760 2.0 arc pre-arc 06:12 8761 900.0 target science 06:30 8762 900.0 target science 06:47 8763 900.0 target science 07:05 8764 900.0 target science 07:23 8765 901.0 target science 07:29 8766 240.0 smear {{Smear Pattern}} 07:32 8767 10.0 flat post-flat 07:34 8768 2.0 arc post-arc DONE Cart 5 Plate 273 ---------------- offset: Time Cart Plate getclock Az Alt Rot Scale 00:46 5 273 982395989 -0.001189 -0.001686 0.009139 0.999940 epxosures: 07:49 8769 10.0 flat pre-flat 07:51 8770 2.0 arc pre-arc 08:10 8771 901.0 target science 08:29 8772 901.0 target science 08:47 8773 900.0 target science 08:53 8774 240.0 smear {{Smear Pattern}} 08:56 8775 10.0 flat post-flat 08:58 8776 2.0 arc post-arc DONE Cart 8 Plate 493 ---------------- offset: Time Cart Plate getclock Az Alt Rot Scale 02:25 8 493 982401942 0.001377 -0.003171 -0.078079 0.999900 exposures: 09:28 8777 10.0 flat pre-flat 09:30 8778 2.0 arc pre-arc 09:49 8779 901.0 target science 10:07 8780 901.0 target science 10:24 8781 901.0 target science 10:42 8782 900.0 target science 10:48 8783 240.0 smear {{Smear Pattern}} 10:51 8784 10.0 flat post-flat 10:53 8785 2.0 arc post-arc DONE Cart 4 Plate 304 ---------------- offset: Time Cart Plate getclock Az Alt Rot Scale 04:04 4 304 982407878 -0.001068 -0.000771 0.010220 0.999900 exposures: 11:06 8786 10.0 flat pre-flat 11:09 8787 2.0 arc pre-arc 11:27 8788 900.0 target science 11:45 8789 901.0 target science 12:02 8790 901.0 target science 12:20 8791 900.0 target science 12:27 8792 240.0 smear {{Smear Pattern}} 12:30 8793 10.0 flat post-flat 12:32 8794 2.0 arc post-arc DONE MIRRORS: ======== PRIMARY: -------- Scale: 1.000000 MIGS TONIGHT NOMINAL Axial A: 0.0390 0.0150 Axial B: -0.0590 -0.0510 Axial C: 0.0209 0.0300 Trans D: 3.7490 3.7560 Lateral E: 1.9069 1.9100 Lateral F: 0.4074 0.4095 GALILS Commanded: 4900. -2750. 450. -6650. 8750. 8300. Actual: 4900. -2750. 450. -6650. 8750. 8300. SETMIR VALUES primDesOrient: 0.00 -4.40 10.70 586.50 240.70 primOrient: 0.00 -4.56 10.53 586.58 240.03 SECONDARY: ---------- Focus: 200.0 Air temp: -3.4 C Altitude: 64.28 MIGS TONIGHT Axial A: -1.3559 Axial B: -1.3609 Axial C: -1.3129 Trans D: 0.2829 GALILS Commanded: 1692100. 1692100. 1692100. 8700. 9900. Actual: 1692071. 1691995. 1692108. 8700. 9900. SETMIR VALUES secDesOrient: 1342.56 0.00 0.00 0.00 -315.05 secOrient: 1342.51 -0.03 -0.02 -0.01 -315.53 FOCUS LOG: ========== setmir piston Temp Wind Time Inst scale M1 M2 Foc Az Alt (C) MPH Dir filt fwhm 19:54 7 541 1.00010 -988 523 200 98 65.2 -3.3 7 87 gdr 3.5 21:02 7 541 1.00010 -988 351 50 93 79.5 -1.9 9 154 gdr 2.5 23:24 6 502 0.99999 99 1295 50 28 56.0 -2.4 12 180 gdr 2.1 01:13 5 273 0.99994 593 1752 100 -13 56.5 -3.6 12 171 gdr 2.5 02:36 8 493 0.99990 988 1982 0 182 55.2 -2.7 9 181 gdr 2.3 04:15 4 304 0.99990 988 1978 0 7 57.0 -3.2 4 204 gdr 2.7 04:51 4 304 0.99985 1481 2437 50 -9 56.8 -1.7 2 185 gdr 2.6 LN2 SCHEDULE: ============= End of night dewar weights: Spec: 174 Im: 178 PROBLEMS: ========= Continued V1_R_check problems. Once, resumeStare didn't work. One plate just could not get stars well centered near the zenith. See text. WEATHER DATA: ============= Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust DIMM Sky Precip. 19:01 26 14 11 80 (E) 2561 20:01 26 3 11 139 (SE) 884 21:01 29 -8 11 159 (SSE) 498 22:01 28 -1 13 178 (S) 895 23:01 28 -2 12 177 (S) 702 00:01 27 -3 10 181 (S) 542 01:01 27 -5 11 173 (S) 409 02:01 24 2 7 113 (ESE) 890 03:01 27 2 6 180 (S) 200 04:01 27 4 6 183 (S) 212 05:01 28 3 6 190 (S) 196 [pmt]cl = partly, mostly, totally cloudy DATA LOGS FROM IOP/SOP: =======================