Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 06:38:08 -0700 (MST) From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 981117 Tuesday, November 17th 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5-meter Observing Log ACTUAL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- C.Hoopes C.Hoopes DIS 11/17-18 18:26 00:10 R.Wyse R.Wyse SPIcam 11/18 00:10 05:11 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NM03/S 18:26 00:10 0 - 2.0 - 3.7 - 0 0 - JH02/R 00:10 05:11 0 - 0.1 - 4.9 - 0 0 - -------- ACTIVITY LOG -------- 1st half Observing Specialist: Camron Hastings (verbal report, paraphrased by RM) First half was partly cloudy but otherwise very uneventful until DIS's shutter got stuck open. The DIS PC was constantly querying the shutter, which meant that it was impossible to force a readout without causing a command collision. Eventually, I tried hitting ^C on the DIS PC, which made a readout possible -- but the image was ruined anyway. On inspecting the slit wheel I discovered that the wrong slit was in place (1 arcsec instead of 2 arcsec), but no one had updated the relevant files or stickies. The cardboard backing on the 1" slit was starting to peel away and *may* have been causing the shutter problems. I installed the 2" steel slit and the observer was able to get a few science exposures. 2nd half Observing Specialist: Russet McMillan The weather was quite clear throughout second half, but the seeing was much poorer than last night (1.2 - 1.7 arcsec). JHU's connection with the spicam controller on dryrot hung up around 02:30 in the middle of a series of exposures. The connection via Remark and ftp hung up at the same time, but came back after a few minutes; the dryrot connection did not. Error messages included "connection reset by peer" and "connection closed." When the observer tried to reconnect, dryrot said that the control program was already running. Since spicam wasn't doing anything (the later images in the series were never taken), I advised killing the process and restarting. Several other communications stalls occurred later (03:05, 03:16) without breaking the connection to dryrot. The stalls did cause delays in spicam's execution of macros (somewhere around the point of image readout), even though no input from JHU was necessary for the macros to continue. During this time, there were no noticeable problems with communications between APO and the outside world, aside from JHU. This is the third time that the JHU connection has mysteriously failed when both institutions were still in full contact with the rest of the world. ----- OBSERVER COMMENTS ----- C. Hoopes, NM03: The night started out cloudy, but started to clear. The shutter hung on DIS at the end of the second hour-long exposure. That image was lost. Then it was discovered that the wrong slit was in DIS. It took considerable time to get things going again. Other than that things went fine. I noticed that the central wavelength on the blue side of DIS was about 110 Angstroms less than what I typed in. The red side was pretty close to the right value. R. Wyse, JH02 Everything was fine, except a several inexplicable small delays when SPICAM seemed to just sit there doing nothing for a few minutes. FOCUS LOG November 17th 1998 Best Telescope Temp Wind Seeing Time Instrmt Focus Az El Air/Truss Dir MPH filter FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:20 DIS +175(6576) 88 67 6.3/8.6 242 11 none 1.7 00:30 SPIcam -230(6114) 102 64 5.9/6.6 263 16 V 1.2 00:55 guider 48900(6116) 107 69 5.7/6.4 265 17 R 1.4 WEATHER LOG November 17th 1998 Wind Time Temp-F Dewp-F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 47 21 11 209 (SSW) ptly cldy none 17:01 45 21 7 191 (S) ptly cldy none 18:01 44 23 11 224 (SW) cloudy none 19:01 44 24 12 242 (WSW) ptly cldy none 20:01 42 24 13 245 (WSW) ptly cldy none 21:01 44 21 15 255 (WSW) ptly cldy none 22:01 45 24 18 256 (WSW) mstly clr none 23:01 45 22 17 260 (W) clear none 00:01 44 24 19 253 (WSW) clear none 01:01 42 26 16 267 (W) clear none 02:01 42 27 16 269 (W) clear none 03:01 42 23 15 268 (W) clear none 04:01 42 21 18 269 (W) clear none 05:01 43 16 14 289 (WNW) mstly clr none 06:01 43 14 19 299 (WNW) mstly clr 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, Russet McMillan