Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 06:50:32 -0700 (MST) From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 981126 Thursday, November 26th 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5-meter Observing Log ACTUAL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- E.Turner C.Hastings SPIcam 11/26 18:24 19:14 M.Strauss X.Fan,M.Strauss DIS 11/26-27 19:14 00:10 Lamb F.Castander DIS 11/27 00:10 05:18 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PU01/S 18:24 19:14 - 0 - 0 - 0.8 0 - 0 PU02/R 19:14 00:10 0 0 0 1.0 0.3 3.7 0 0 0 UC03/R 00:10 05:18 0 - 0.2 - 4.9 - 0 0 - -------- ACTIVITY LOG -------- 1st half Observing Specialist: Camron Hastings This Thanksgiving brought high cirrus, but the seeing was good, thankfully. I opened the enclosure at 16:00 to begin cooling. I could see through the majority of the clouds during focus, so I continued as normal. I checked the DIS LN2 at 12:00 and again at 16:00. It seems to be behaving itself. I started the evening with the cirrus, but obtained some very good images of the lens object anyway. Finished PU01 and mounted DIS for PU02 on time and with now problems. Last night the lens images from SPIcam displayed an odd brightness across the right third of the chip, there was no such artifact this evening. All went very smoothly. PU02 had a problem that was not discovered until the end of the first image. There was no spectrum on either the object, sky, or arcs. It appeared that the grating definitions were not correct. When I looked at DIS and hit 'sync' it revealed that the default setting were in place. I re-defined the grating zero steps and we re-tilted. This fixed the problem, but a half hour exposure, arc lamps, and the fix time were lost. 2nd half Observing Specialist: Russet McMillan Second half was pretty smooth, with mostly clear weather all morning. The seeing was around 1 arcsec or less at first (as far as I could judge during spectroscopy), but got suddenly worse around 04:00. This was at the same time as a small but definite shift in wind direction and speed, which probably explains it. The only problems we encountered were familiar ones. When I checked DIS' transfer dewar at the beginning of second half, it was almost empty. I filled it, and for the remainder of the night it held well. The boresight on the slit camera moved again, to about 230 in X. ------------ Observer Comments ------------ PU01 (Hastings): Despite cirrus, great run. Many thanks to the operator. :) PU02 (Strauss/Fan): we lost one hour due to DIS problem. Things are fine other than that. UC03 (Castander): Everything worked fine. Cheers, Francisco Javier FOCUS LOG November 26th 1998 Best Telescope Temp (C) Wind Seeing Time Instrmt Focus Az El Air/Truss Dir MPH filter FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 17:50 SPIcam -080(6374) 166 60 9.2/10.1 180 6.4 g' 1.09" 18:00 Guider 50925(6374) 168 60 9.1/10.0 185 5.3 none 1.26" 18:30 SPIcam -130(6284) 188 60 8.3/ 9.1 179 4.6 r' 0.92" 18:35 Guider 51000(6284) 189 60 8.3/ 9.1 179 7.5 none 0.93" 18:40 SPIcam -160(6240) 190 60 8.2/ 8.8 177 8.3 g' 0.87" 19:20 DIS -125(6346) 160 56 7.5/ 8.4 181 10 none 0.97" 19:30 Guider 52000(6346) 160 56 7.9/ 8.4 181 9.5 none 0.89" WEATHER LOG November 26th 1998 Wind Time Temp-F Dewp-F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 51 7 1 208 (SSW) ptly cldy none 17:01 47 4 5 183 (S) ptly cldy none 18:01 48 3 7 193 (SSW) ptly cldy none 19:01 46 2 8 175 (S) ptly cldy none 20:01 47 19 10 181 (S) ptly cldy none 21:01 47 25 12 184 (S) ptly cldy none 22:01 47 27 8 191 (S) ptly cldy none 23:01 47 27 13 193 (SSW) ptly cldy none 00:01 46 28 11 187 (S) mstly clr none 01:01 46 30 19 202 (SSW) clear none 02:01 45 31 9 184 (S) mstly clr none 03:01 45 32 11 188 (S) mstly clr none 04:01 45 29 7 193 (SSW) clear none 05:01 45 20 5 259 (W) clear none 06:01 45 14 13 289 (WNW) 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 - NCH, RM