Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 12:18:46 GMT From: long@apo.nmsu.edu (Daniel Long) Subject: 2.5m obslog 20030918 (MJD 52901) APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY SDSS 2.5M OBSERVING LOG Thursday September 18, 2003 (MJD 52901) ---=== OBSERVING TEAM ===--- Dan Long Scot Kleinman Mike Harvanek (swing) ---=== OBSERVING PLAN ===--- Shakedown the science! ---=== OBSERVING SUMMARY ===--- It was photometric all night with widely varying temperature and seeing as two very different air masses battled overhead. We started with imaging as it was clear and the moon was down the first half of the night. Oblique scan setup showed poor seeing. We switched to Apache Wheel at twilight. Between twilight and moonrise there was time to image two spokes ( 295, 310 ) and rim between 290 and 340. It was a smooth run with no DA troubles. We may have had an M2 oscillation event. During the Apache Wheel scan, run 4109, frame 93, there were odd shaped stars for part of that frame. Second half was spent doing spectroscopy in seeing which slowly improved from atrocious to reasonable. A large temperature change during the first half of the night necessitated refocusing the spectrographs. Some data obtained on plate 1091, and 1242 was finished. ---=== OBSERVING LOG ===--- Afternoon checkout: The alarm on the box containing the 2.5m exhaust fan control is flashing. However, the fan came on so there does not seem to be a problem. Other than that, there were no problems this afternoon. Night: 01:15Z Enclosure off We chose to begin the night with the imager as it was clear and the moon was not due to rise until around midnight. As if on queue the wind shifted to the east at sunset and the temperature began to plummet. 01:45Z Attempting oblique scan, but the front passing and wind shift to the east doesn't bode well. 02:00Z Run 4107 Oblique scan Starting lead in to dec only direction on oblique scan. Seeing doesn't look good. FWHM between 2 and 3 arcseconds. 02:30Z Twilight passes and seeing still bad, so Apache Wheel it is. 4108 Apache Wheel bias 4109 Apache Wheel RA Dec Frames rim 290 - 344 0 10 - 29 spoke 295 -25 - +54 32 - 63 Nearing az limit con't spoke 295 +53 - +71 68 - 75 spoke 310 -23 - +83* 78 - 127 *On the other side of the pole Note: When doing spokes west of the meridian, need to make sure track command has az wrap positive. Frame 93 has out of round stars for part of the frame. Most likely due to M2 oscillation. CCD 15 complained about vs- (you could also see horizontal streaks coming off most stars). I believe this is a known problem. 4010 Normal bias drift. It worked. We had an entire Apache Wheel session without a DA crash (we did keep the drift going for the various AW components which improved our odds). 06:40Z Switch to spectroscopy now that moon is up. 07:00Z Cartridge 1 1091 REALLY fuzzy stars. FWHM probably 4 - 5 arcseconds. 07:10Z Scot started preCalib sequence and his sop session never completed the sequence. He took a guider flat but his guiderMon never showed it, and the arcs and flats were not taken. There was also no complaint from sop. Instruments were grabbed at the time. Thinking there may have been a server problem he dropped and regrabbed. This time the preCalib sequence completed properly. 07:35Z First science exposure aborted when the results for the preCals came in. The 15 C temperature drop tonight have put the spectrographs significantly out of focus. All XSIGMA and WSIGMA values were red. Exposures 22308, 22309, 22310 declared bad. Spectrographs were focused in two iterations of goSpecFocus. It took moves of -14000 and -17000 to get them back in focus. They were out more than 1.2 pixels. While refocusing, the wind shifted back to the SW and the temperature warmed about 8 C (will we need to refocus again?). Seeing was much improved after the wind shift. Got two useful science exposures before plate got too far over. 09:22Z Wrong number of pix warning in second science exposure (22320) dsc E trcErr WRONG num of pix?? for (sr 0.15 pix) COLLIMATE: Predict (red) piston movement of -11149 steps for spectro-1 COLLIMATE: Issue SOP command: "sp1; mechPiston -11149" Log file = Collimate-52901-r1-00022311.log PostScript file = Collimate-52901-r1-00022311.ps Reading /data/spectro/52901/sdR-r2-00022311.fit Reading /data/spectro/52901/sdR-r2-00022312.fit COLLIMATE: Min offset = 0.62 pix COLLIMATE: Max offset = 1.81 pix COLLIMATE: RMS across CCD = 0.32 pix COLLIMATE: Mean offset = 1.45 pix COLLIMATE: Camera r2 appears to be OUT-OF-FOCUS (|mean| > 0.15 pix) COLLIMATE: Predict (red) piston movement of -13312 steps for spectro-2 COLLIMATE: Issue SOP command: "sp2; mechPiston -13312" Log file = Collimate-52901-r2-00022311.log PostScript file = Collimate-52901-r2-00022311.ps Spectro refocus round 2: COLLIMATE: Min offset = -0.62 pix COLLIMATE: Max offset = 1.02 pix COLLIMATE: RMS across CCD = 0.33 pix COLLIMATE: Mean offset = 0.37 pix COLLIMATE: Camera r1 appears to be OUT-OF-FOCUS (|mean| > 0.15 pix) COLLIMATE: Predict (red) piston movement of -3346 steps for spectro-1 COLLIMATE: Issue SOP command: "sp1; mechPiston -3346" Log file = Collimate-52901-r1-00022313.log PostScript file = Collimate-52901-r1-00022313.ps Reading /data/spectro/52901/sdR-r2-00022313.fit Reading /data/spectro/52901/sdR-r2-00022314.fit COLLIMATE: Min offset = -0.17 pix COLLIMATE: Max offset = 0.59 pix COLLIMATE: RMS across CCD = 0.20 pix COLLIMATE: Mean offset = 0.30 pix COLLIMATE: Camera r2 appears to be OUT-OF-FOCUS (|mean| > 0.15 pix) COLLIMATE: Predict (red) piston movement of -2765 steps for spectro-2 COLLIMATE: Issue SOP command: "sp2; mechPiston -2765" Log file = Collimate-52901-r2-00022313.log PostScript file = Collimate-52901-r2-00022313.ps