From: "Camron Hastings" Subject: 3.5-meter night log 981115 Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 05:31:19 -0700 Saturday, November 14th 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5-meter Observing Log ACTUAL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- E.Turner C.Hastings SPIcam 11/14 18:28 19:18 M.Strauss Strauss/Fan SPIcam/DIS 11/14-15 19:33 00:08 R.Wyse R.Wyse GRIM 11/15 00:08 05:08 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PU01/S 18:28 19:18 0 - 0.7 - 0.1 - 0 0 - PU02/R 19:18 00:08 0 - 1.4 - 3.4 - 0 0 - JH02/R 00:08 05:08 0 0 0 0 3.2 1.8 0 0 0 -------- ACTIVITY LOG -------- 1st half observing specialist: Camron Hastings 2nd half observing specialist: Camron Hastings I opened the dome at 16:50MST and switched the PMSS over to nitrogen for a bit as a preventative measure. Beautiful photometric skies greeted me with cold stable air. When trying to initialize the motors I found that the emergency stop switch located near the PMSS is broken. The light was not on, but it had disabled the motors. After fiddling with it began to work, but the red plastic cover popped off. A problem report has been submitted. The first lens images with SPIcam showed mirror jumps again. I switched back to air to see if that would help. Good seeing was ruined by the PMSS problems though, with average image FWHM=1.9". Dan Long and I checked the valve voltage in the PMSS and determined that the mirror was not at fault. We were perplexed by the sudden change, then we noticed that precisely when we began to observe the wind changed direction to the east and ruined our seeing. Oh well, so much for panic. I switched over to DIS for PU02 on time and had problems with the secondary popping. When we aborted the exposure to refocus, the DIS shutter became stuck and took quite a bit of time to fix. Finally, after power cycling everything and homing DIS I got the shutter to close. I talked with Karen and Craig via telephone and they mentioned that the shutter sometimes rubs on the slit wheel, but I did not see that this time. It must have been software somewhere. JH02 started on time without incident. We imaged for the rest of the night without incident. R.Wyse did mention that the pointed has varied by about 15" from last night. ----- OBSERVER COMMENTS ----- (*...)Annotations by NCH PU02 (Strauss/Fan): This was a night of decent seeing and clear skies. We lost almost 1.5 hours in the beginning of the night when the telescope glitched and lost its pointing. (*The telescope glitch was not pointing related, it was a shutter problem with DIS.) When we subsequently stopped the exposure early from remark, we put DIS into some weird state which required rebooting DIS and restarting the MC node. (*The fix was quite a bit more elaborate in process, though the final fix seemed fairly simple.) Thereafter things seemed to work fine. The problem we mentioned on Wednesday night seems to persist: there is a dramatic change in focus from one side of the slit to the other on the low-resolution grating in the red. We have stumped Jim Gunn as to its cause. (*I spoke with Jim about this this evening and we feel that the collimator needs to be refocused, which we will try on Monday or Tuesday as time permits) JH02 (Wyse): FOCUS LOG November 14th 1998 Best Telescope Temp Wind Seeing Time Instrmt Focus Az El Air/Truss Dir MPH filter FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:10 SPIcam -100(6332) 154 58 6.6/8.3 78 12 r' 0.83" 18:20 Guider 48000(6332) 157 58 6.6/8.2 79 12 none 1.03" 19:30 DIS -025(6367) 151 59 5.5/6.7 80 12 none 1.25" 21:05 DIS -050(6294) 199 57 6.3/5.5 72 10 none 1.03" 00:23 GRIM II -100(6293) 100 62 5.8/4.8 41 0 f/5,J 0.78" 04:23 GRIM II +010(6397) 256 67 6.2/4.9 198 1 f/5,K 0.63" WEATHER LOG November 14th 1998 Wind Time Temp-F Dewp-F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 46 28 4 353 (N) Clear None 17:01 46 26 5 85 (E) Clear None 18:01 44 20 11 76 (ENE) Clear None 19:01 43 20 12 75 (ENE) Clear None 20:01 42 20 12 75 (ENE) Clear None 21:01 43 20 11 82 (E) Clear None 22:01 44 20 10 72 (ENE) Clear None 23:01 42 20 11 78 (ENE) Clear None 00:01 41 20 8 58 (ENE) Clear None 01:01 42 21 1 269 (W) Clear None 02:01 43 20 0 26 (NNE) Clear None 03:01 42 20 2 127 (SE) Clear None 04:01 43 20 1 200 (SSW) Clear None 05:01 43 21 0 206 (SSW) Clear None note: the wind was coming from the azimuth listed. The convention used is north=0 degrees, east=90 degrees. The dust count is for the 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: 2.42a Current guide software version: GIm Ctrl v3.0b 15.out - Camron Hastings