Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 05:56:25 -0600 (MDT) From: Pete Newman Subject: 2.5m obslog 20010520 (MJD 52050) Apache Point Observatory - SDSS 2.5m Observing Log 2001 May 20 - MJD 52050 PEOPLE ====== 2.5m Observers: Mike Harvanek (APO), Pete Newman (APO), Support: Carlos Gonzales (FNAL), French Leger (FNAL, by phone), Dan Long (APO, by phone). Visitors: Paul Hickson and two colleagues whose names we did not get. They were working in the lab on a new camera for the 3.5-m liquid mirror telescope at the NASA Orbital Debris Monitoring Observatory just north of Cloudcroft, NM. OBSERVING PLAN ============== Science. Imaging as priority, then spectroscopy. OBSERVING SUMMARY ================= Hardware problems, compounded by bad seeing lost us time until ~02:20, then spectroscopy. Plate 630 completed with high S/N. OBSERVERS' LOG ============== The clouds were diminishing rapidly at sunset and the wind direction (from the west) was favourable for good seeing so we decided to start with the imager. We lost some time trying to find out how the new safety latches were supposed to work, and only opened near the end of twilight. During opening (around 21:20) the flat-field petals stalled about 3/4ths open, then refused to move. See Problems section #1. We found a work-round after consulting with French, and started to attempt imaging from 22:40. During the attempts at imaging, it became apparent that the observers are suffering from a great lack of documentation related to recent changes in imaging procedures. See Problems section #2. We obtained no good imaging data as the seeing was in fact poor (~1.9 arcsec or worse), but we could not immediately switch to spectroscopy without the flat-field screen, so we continued to image in case the seeing improved while we found French and he found an engineer. Carlos arrived at 01:00, fixed the fault, and handed us back the fixed telescope at 01:50. Many thanks to Carlos for coming out in the small hours and to French for coordinating the fix from several hundred miles away during his time off. We lost use of the sky camera around 00:50, although the satellite images suggested conditions remained photometric. Camron (3.5-m observer) raised an APO problem report on that. We swapped instruments and finally slewed to the field for plate 630, cartridge 7 at 02:20. In mounting and unmounting the imager, no alarm on the T-bar latch states sounded. See Problems section #3. Plate 630, cartridge 7: we got (S/N)^2 > 15 for all cameras in three exposures, but it was too late in the night to make it worth starting another plate, so we added exposures to give a very high S/N set. We passed frame number 10000 in doing so! After the last exposure, shortly before getclock=990441947, we managed to get instChange to loop. See Problems section #4. We tested TPM version 2_3_6 all night. This version is supposed to fix the problem of slow display update (PR/2351), but we found the delays still occuring. See Problems section #5. We changed the HVAC duct lower limit set point. See Telescope and Enclosure status section for details. We noted that the primary lateral E MIG reading was 0.0025 away from nominal, while the difference limit is supposed to be i4l SPECTROSCOPY DATA: iop> sc4l, then s4l MIGS: iop> m4l, start of run, track 121,30, focus=0, scale=1 FOCUS LOG: iop> f4l AXIS OFFSETS: iop> o4l LN2 180-LITER DEWARS: from TPM display at time noted. WEATHER DATA: from 'wlf Weather-yyyymmdd' on wx@marmot:~/data SOFTWARE VERSIONS: iop> iopVersion; watcherVersion; mcpVersion; astrodaVer tccmon> show version; others from their windows TIMES: All times APO local (MST/MDT) unless specified. MAIL TO: obs-report-25m@apo.nmsu.edu SUBJECT: 2.5m obslog yyyymmdd (MJD xxxxx) WEIRD STUFF FROM instChange =========================== sp1> instChange [followed by some up arrow keys] sp1> instChangestopGuider mcpPut: sp1 slitdoor.open sp2 slitdoor.open mcpPut: sp1 slitheadlatch.open sp2 slitheadlatch.open mcpPut: az brake.off mcpPut: az AXIS.STATUS mcpPut: alt brake.off mcpPut: alt AXIS.STATUS I think that we haven't started slewing To kill this message, type 'schedule watchTCCSlew {} 0' Mon May 21 04:42:52 MDT 2001 77 sp1 camcheck Mon May 21 04:42:54 MDT 2001 77 sp2 camcheck I think that the slew has started I think that the slew is finished mcpPut: sp1 slitdoor.open sp2 slitdoor.open mcpPut: sp1 slitheadlatch.open sp2 slitheadlatch.open mcpPut: az brake.off mcpPut: az AXIS.STATUS mcpPut: alt brake.off mcpPut: alt AXIS.STATUS I think that we haven't started slewing To kill this message, type 'schedule watchTCCSlew {} 0' I think that the slew has started I think that the slew is finished Error: invalid command name "instChangestopGuider" sp1> mcpPut: sp1 slitdoor.open sp2 slitdoor.open mcpPut: sp1 slitheadlatch.open sp2 slitheadlatch.open mcpPut: az brake.off mcpPut: az AXIS.STATUS mcpPut: alt brake.off mcpPut: alt AXIS.STATUS I think that we haven't started slewing To kill this message, type 'schedule watchTCCSlew {} 0' I think that the slew has started I think that the slew is finished Error: invalid command name "instChangestopGuider" sp1> mcpPut: sp1 slitdoor.open sp2 slitdoor.open mcpPut: sp1 slitheadlatch.open sp2 slitheadlatch.open mcpPut: az brake.off mcpPut: az AXIS.STATUS mcpPut: alt brake.off mcpPut: alt AXIS.STATUS I think that we haven't started slewing To kill this message, type 'schedule watchTCCSlew {} 0' I think that the slew has started I think that the slew is finished Error: invalid command name "instChangestopGuider" sp1> mcpPut: sp1 slitdoor.open sp2 slitdoor.open mcpPut: sp1 slitheadlatch.open sp2 slitheadlatch.open mcpPut: az brake.off mcpPut: az AXIS.STATUS mcpPut: alt brake.off mcpPut: alt AXIS.STATUS I think that we haven't started slewing To kill this message, type 'schedule watchTCCSlew {} 0' I think that the slew has started I think that the slew is finished Error: invalid command name "instChangestopGuider" sp1> mcpPut: sp1 slitdoor.open sp2 slitdoor.open mcpPut: sp1 slitheadlatch.open sp2 slitheadlatch.open mcpPut: az brake.off mcpPut: az AXIS.STATUS mcpPut: alt brake.off mcpPut: alt AXIS.STATUS I think that we haven't started slewing To kill this message, type 'schedule watchTCCSlew {} 0' I think that the slew has started I think that the slew is finished Error: invalid command name "instChangestopGuider" ...at which point we killed it somehow.