Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 05:33:39 -0700 (MST) From: Tia Hoyes Subject: 3.5m obslog 980115 THURSDAY JANUARY 15, 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Turner SPICAM 1/15 17:50 19:20 Hoard DIS 1/15 19:35 00:00 York SPICAM 1/15 00:21 04:30 INST SCHEDULED OBS WEATH EQUIP DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B PU01/S 18:47 19:27 0.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 UW10/R 19:27 00:10 1.0 3.2 0 0 0 0.6 0 0 0 UC01/R 00:10 05:39 0.8 0 0 0 0 4.7 0 0 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG (* means a trouble report has been issued or appended to) The telescope was opened at 17:30. I observed 2237 with SPICAM. I got about eleven images. I sent an email to Ed Turner, at his request, stating the observations I made. Comments:Thanks! That is great; tonight was the last night in which the PU01 time was scheduled to catch 2237, so I am very glad we got it. It is too bad the seeing was not a bit better, the "average" SPIcam image quality would have been ideal for the tests we want to run, but of course nothing can be done about that and this will definitely be abig help. I am not too concerned about the flats...we were mostly interested in the SPIcam image quality and pixel sampling effects. Thanks again, Ed Don Hoard was the second observer using GRIM2. Comments:Our dithering script hung 10 times during the (half-)night out of 26 total attempts to run the script. The script aborted outright twice, with the error message "no flush, check electronics." GRIM recovered well after we issued a "grimabort" command and restarted the script, but we lost time each occurence recentering the telescope and restarting the dither pattern. We estimate that we lost approximately 30 minutes altogether recovering from script hangs and repeating dithers after instances when the script failed near the middle of the pattern. The script always seems to hang immediately after the "starting exposure" step (i.e., right before flushing the chip). On a positive note, the FTP link stayed connected all night. - Don Hoard & Bernadette Rodgers I checked GRIM2, but I did not see any problems (good ping). Connie Rockosi was the third observer using SPICAM. Comments:The sky was too cloudy for good data. The SPIcam camera controller stopped responding during a sequence of "object" exposures at about 1am MST. I quit the spicam shell and restarted, but continued getting an error, so I asked Tia to reset the controller. The first attempt to restart the spicam shell gave the message "error initializing shutter" followed by errors for all camera controller commands. The second attempt failed at the controller init. We tried this several times and tried re-installing the filter wheel, then tried several more times power-cycling the shutter/filter wheel controller as well as resetting the camera controlller, all with the same results (SHINIT error the first time, controller init failure the second time). Many thanks to Tia for running up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down some more to try and get SPIcam working. FOCUS LOG JANUARY 15, 1998 Best Telescope Wind Seeing Time Inst Focus Az El Temp# Dir MPH filter FWHM " 18:06 SPICAM -200(5959) 245.9 37.1 -0.6/0.7 336.1 12.0 R 1.32 19:45 GRIM2 0(6134) 169.3 66.4 -1.6/-0.9 297.9 15.3 K prim 1.76 21:00 SPICAM +50(6258) 129.5 40.1 -1.7/-1.47 275.7 14.4 K prim 2.7 00:30 SPICAM -50(6004) 314.7 40.2 -1.6/-1.78 318.9 15.2 i' 1.74 # The first temp is air, the second is truss, both in degrees C. WEATHER JANUARY 15, 1998 Wind Time Temp F Dewp. MPH. Dir. DUST Sky Precip. 16:01 35 -16 13 315 (NW) 68 cirrus none 17:01 33 -29 10 299 (WNW) 46 cirrus none 18:01 32 -29 13 325 (NW) 70 cirrus none 19:01 29 -3 8 308 (NW) 147 cirrus none 20:01 29 4 16 293 (WNW) 197 clearing none 21:01 30 9 22 289 (WNW) 207 clearing none 22:01 29 9 13 288 (WNW) 215 light clouds none 23:01 30 8 9 284 (WNW) 235 light clouds none 00:01 30 10 14 317 (NW) 237 light clouds none 01:01 33 14 19 328 (NNW) 266 mostly cloudy none 02:01 33 12 18 307 (NW) 217 mostly cloudy none 03:01 32 15 23 327 (NNW) 209 mostly cloudy none 04:01 31 22 11 345 (NNW) 136 mostly cloudy none 05:01 31 21 13 343 (NNW) 158 mostly cloudy none note: the wind was coming from the azimuth listed. The convention used is north=0 degrees, east=90 degrees. The dust count is particles >1 micron per 0.1 cu. ft. TELESCOPE STATUS Primary, secondary, and tertiary mirrors in place and collimated. Primary support system operational. Mirror ventilation system in place. Telescope drives operational. Current Remark version: 2.36 Current guide software version:GIm Ctrlv3.0b11. -Tia