Subject: 2.5m obslog 20141108 (SJD 56970) From: dmbiz@apo.nmsu.edu Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2014 12:32:30 +0000 (UTC) APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY SDSS 2.5M OBSERVING LOG Saturday November 08, 2014 (SJD 56970) ---- Observing Team ---- Karen Kinemuchi Dmitry Bizyaev Gordon Freischlad Kaike Pan (first half of the night) Jon Brinkmann (support over the phone) ---- Observing Summary ---- Clear night with moderate seeing. We finished the high-altitude tracking test with two stars, see log. Home-relaxed mirrors successfully. Updated fiducial tables - were unable to update using new machines and new procedures. Had to do it on hub25m, by suggestion of JB. Attempted to complete 155- or 150-pt pointing model. During collecting data had multiple rotator fiducial errors and rotator axis failures. Fitting to collected data showed terribly high r.m.s. In the morning we found that zero position of rotator is reported as ~ -62.5 deg in MCP. Telescope is not in working conditions now due to this problem. --------------------------------------------------------------- As a result, were unable to replace engineering camera with a cartridge. Need help from engineers to fix the problem! Old Plate-db is not working - reports errors, so we cannot select plates for tomorrow BOSS observations. Tried to apply old procedures to resurrect old plate-db, but the plan plugging page doesn't work any way. ---- Observing Plan ---- Schedule : Sat 8 NOV 2014 56970.0 0.96 00:43 12:33 20:52 08:44 Night APOGEE-2 (11.8 h) But the real plan is to finish Paul's zenith guiding tests and do new pointing model. ---- Observing Log ---- Afternoon Checkout ------------------ 22:49Z Apogee Cals started Tried to get mirror stats, but Alt is at 29.5 degrees. Mirror numbers are ok. Did not do guider prep because of the ecamera. Ecamera connection is sound. All actors ok. Cart bay is ready. Telescope is ready. 23:28Z ventilation begins. Night: ------ 00:12Z enclosure opened LN2 filled. By tonight's pan, we go ahead and do home/relax mirrors before the tests and pointing mode. Finished home/relaxing first. ~ 01:54Z started guiding-at-zenith test Focusing: seeing ~ 1.3" with the eng camera Used Elena's scripts: very convenient and quick to focus! Tracking star through the zenith , started at HA ~ -15 min, Dec ~ 36 deg. Problems during the tracking: reported bad fiducial 02:27:56 Az: ind=25, deg=167.4, err= -737 error is too large to be corrected ( > 600) After that we decided t not correct fiducials on the fly, and to go with uncorrected until the end of the tracking test. We tracked from ~ -15 min to +15 min in HA. Ecam images /data/ecam/56970/ from 24 to 135 Second star: started at ~ -25 min HA, dec ~ +29 Ecamera exposures: /data/ecam/56970/ from 136 to 306 During the second track, the fiducial AZ error showed close to the end of the sequence: 03:27:00 Az: ind=12, deg=-27.8, err= 637 error is too large to be corrected ( > 600) 03:33:08 Az: ind=11, deg=-42.8, err= 754 error is too large to be corrected ( > 600) 3:45Z started pointing model Seeing is ~ 2.4" We had problems with running scripts for updating fiducial tables. John P was not reachable. Called JB: we have to use the old machine to update fiducial tables: sdss3@sdss3-hub, or old hub machine (hub25m). John P: we checked it on new machines in August, and it worked. File a ticket. We went with 155-point grid, but starting with ~ 30th star the pointing program started to see no stars in the field. After ~ 20th black frame we stopped executing this grid. We noticed that Calib offset in Az was ~ 8 arcmin, and in Alt was ~ 1 arcmin. Kaike recommended to switch to 150 - point model, since it has been done in the past few times, whereas the 155-pt is a new one. We cleared offsets. 6:55Z switched to running 150-pt model. After star #47 we observed that calib offset got ~ 8 arcmin in AZ, and the next star was missing. We suspected something was wrong and cleared calib offsets. Star #48 - offsets are zeroed. Sent it to the star again (tcc track), found it close to the center of the chip. After that we had several occurrences of bad fiducials (mostly on the rotator axis), large calib offsets, and we corrected these problems on the fly, not loosing significant amount of time. Noticed: Telescope closes petals automatically when approaches dangerous spots "in the sky" - e.g. DIMM location at AZ ~ 78 - 105 deg, ALT ~ 19 - 21 deg. It opens petals automatically when goes away from such spots. Exposures taken **through the closed petals** have stars, and are successfully used for making pointing model. After completion of the pointing model we tried to fit points, but got HUGE r.m.s., ~ 50" (with a few outliers over 200") Tried to edit out offensive points. Removed 3-4 points with large r.m.s., but then figured out that the bulk of the points have r.m.s. > 30", and formal r.m.s. ~ 40". This is abnormal. We tried to fit the interrupted, first set, which has 30 points done only, but got the same order of magnitude for r.m.s. Something is wrong here, we cannot accept this pointing model. After sending telescope to stow we found that rotator is FAR AWAY from zero position, although reported Rot in MCP is zero. We found, coarsely, that it is close to real zero when MCP shown -62.5 deg. We cannot safely replace eng. camera with this rotator problem. 12:05Z telescope closed. LN2 enforced A + B calibs started ---- Telescope Status ---- 23:28Z Started ventilation 00:12Z encl25m : open 12:05Z encl25m : closed No interlocks bypassed Status at: 12:25Z Telescope stowed at: 121.0, 30.0, rotator is messed up mount Instrument mounted: cartridge = Eng Camera Counterweights at: 366 LN2 autofill systems: Connected and turned on 180L LN2 dewar scales: SP1 191 lbs, 21 psi SP2 133 lbs, 20 psi ---- Software Used ---- -- STUI software: STUI : 1.5.0 alerts : trunk+svn149374 apo : trunk+svn158476 boss : v3_5 -boss.daq : 1.3.2 -boss.specMec : 3.0.4 gcamera : v2_0 guider : v2_4 hartmann : v1_2 hub : Tag: sdss4_v2_1 mcp : v6_6_18 -mcp.plc : 29 -mcp.azFiduci : v1_112 -mcp.altFiduc : v1_112 -mcp.rotFiduc : v1_112 platedb : v2_3 sop : v2_11 tcc : 2.14.0 apogee : not availble apogeecal : not availble apogeeql : v1_5_6 -- Other software sdssProcedure : v3_06 APO-local : trunk Setting up: idlspec2d Flavor: Linux64 Version: v5_7_5 Setting up: |elodie Flavor: Linux64 Version: v1_3 Setting up: |spinspect Flavor: Linux64 Version: trunk Setting up: |specflat Flavor: Linux64 Version: v1_20 Setting up: |speclog Flavor: Linux64 Version: trunk Setting up: |platelist Flavor: Linux64 Version: trunk Setting up: |sdss_python_module Flavor: Linux64 Version: v1_3_1 Setting up: |sqlalchemy Flavor: Linux64 Version: 0.9.7 Setting up: |psycopg2 Flavor: Linux64 Version: 2.5.3 Setting up: |idlutils Flavor: Linux64 Version: v5_5_16 Setting up: |idl Flavor: Linux64 Version: 7.1 Setting up: |dust Flavor: Linux64 Version: v0_1 Setting up: |photolog Flavor: Linux64 Version: trunk Setting up: actorcore Flavor: Linux64 Version: v2_3 Setting up: |opscore Flavor: Linux64 Version: v2_1 Setting up: |external Flavor: Linux64 Version: v1_2_0 Setting up: |actorkeys Flavor: Linux64 Version: trunk Setting up: |sdss3tools Flavor: Linux64 Version: v1_7_13 Setting up: |RO Flavor: Linux64 Version: 3.5.1 Setting up: |tron Flavor: Linux64 Version: sdss4_v2 -- Other versions ---- idlspec2d (sos3) --- v5_7_5 plate-mapper3 ------ NOCVS:v5_1_7 ---- Mirror Numbers ---- PRIMARY: -------- Scale: 1.000000 MIGS TONIGHT NOMINAL Axial A: 0.036 0.031 Axial B: -0.014 -0.025 Axial C: -0.023 -0.025 Trans D: -0.023 -0.022 Lateral E: 10.6934 10.7315 Lateral F: 12.3063 12.319 GALILS Commanded: 10850 -450 5750 13050 14750 14300 Actual: 10850 -450 5750 13050 14750 14300 SETMIR VALUES PrimDesOrient: 0.00 0.00 0.00 651.00 937.40 PrimOrient: 0.00 0.00 0.00 651.08 936.54 SECONDARY: ---------- Focus: 0.00 Air temp: 7.3 Altitude: 29.5 MIGS TONIGHT NOMINAL Axial A: -7.163 -7.063 Axial B: -7.22 -7.123 Axial C: -7.129 -7.03 Trans D: -0.186 -0.178 GALILS Commanded: 1707300 1704850 1716650 1400 -2000 Actual: 1707302 1704877 1716644 1400 -2000 SETMIR VALUES SecDesOrient: 1357.00 -3.80 0.00 0.00 9.58 SecOrient: 1356.99 -3.79 0.00 0.00 9.45