Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 06:23:26 -0700 (MST) From: Charles Corson Subject: 3.5m obslog 980310 Tuesday March 10, 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Rockosi Spi 3/10 19:00 00:10 Thilker Dis 3/10 00:20 05:45 INST SCHEDULED OBS WEATH EQUIP DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B UC01 R 19:29 00:10 0 4.3 0 0 0 0.4 0 0 0 NM03 R 00:10 04:57 0 4.1 0 0 0 0.6 0 0 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG Russell Owens was able to locate a 'bug' in the tcc code that was causing the, now infamous, 180deg flip in rotator angle for driftscanning. Russell used the afternoon for tcc access and testing that allowed for the discovery of the bug. Thanks again Russell. Connie Roskosi used spicam in driftscan mode with photometric weather, just what Connie's program called for. The seeing was sub arc-sec and the driftscan worked. Stare images were almost always sub arc-sec, but the driftscan images were generally 1.2arc-sec. *Some time was lost due to a Magna Sensor error with the Azimuth drive. Dave Thilker used DIS to continue his observations but the over all success was impacted by two, seemingly, trivial events. The Guider Controller hung, stopping further exposures (the same error where exposures timeout with no reply from the controller). Recovery is not quick, one must go the the observing level and reboot both the controller and guider mac. *Also, the rotator stopped tracking at 355deg. I was able to recover quickly but the positioning was lost which was critical to the program. Please see observer comments. OBSERVER COMMENTS Connie Rockosi: The axes misbehaved a bit in the early part of my run, but Charles was able to fix whatever the problem was with a minimum of lost time. After that the telescope performed well for the rest of the time I used it. The weather was clear and I am sure it was photometric. Driftscanning with SPIcam went smoothly, though I only went south-to-north so didn't deal with the rotator angle. I did not have any problem with the shutter, either. The major problem I had was with the network connection; it took nearly 5 minutes to get a frame back to look at it which made everything incredibly inefficient. Charles focused and looked at frames for me to check exposure times, etc., which was an enormous help. Twilight flats in particular were a problem given that I needed them in several bandpasses. Thanks again to the folks who worked on the driftscanning for tonight-- Charles, Russel Owen and Gene Mangier and anyone else; I was glad to be able to use a night of such great weather. Dave Thilker: Useful data was obtained tonight despite two frustrating equipment faults. The objective for my run was to obtain several multi-slit spectra, each progressively offset by a distance of ~4 arcsec. This technique allows creation of a finely-sampled map of the emission line velocity field, comparable to the product of a Fabry-Perot instrument. The first failure of the night was related to the guider camera, apparently a comm error between computers. After that was fixed, the rotator axis stopped tracking for no apparent reason. Both of these failures wrecked a sequence of lengthy integrations for which accurate and repeatable pointing was crucial. In the end I only obtained a useful result by dramatically cutting the exposure time per position, probably impacting the desired science. Charles should be commended for helping me recover from these problems in quick fashion. It would be very useful if there were a Java-based applet to display the current guider image, centroiding results, and few small plots of recent guiding corrections to observers (whether remote or on-site). I'm thinking something similar to the experimental cloud camera interface of this sort. FOCUS LOG Best Telescope Wind Seeing Time Inst Focus Az El #Temp Dir MPH filter FWHM " 19:20 Spi -200(5901) 157 54 0.2/1.4 309 9 g' 0.95 20:25 Spi -180(5898) 187 57 0.6/0.6 356 11 g' 0.92 21:10 Spi -140(5959) 190 45 0.6/0.4 0 5 g' 0.78 21:50 Spi -80(6003) 220 49 1.3/0.5 345 12 g' 1.1 00:20 Dis -60(6028) 274 70 0.2/0.4 30 10 r 1.0 #The first temp is air, the second is truss, both in degrees Celsius WEATHER Wind Time Temp F Dewp. F MPH. Dir. Dust Sky Precip. 16:01 37 12 8 267 (W) 448 clear 17:01 38 14 4 266 (W) 404 clear 18:01 33 11 4 250 (WSW) 419 clear 19:01 33 2 8 287 (WNW) 168 clear 20:01 34 0 9 7 (N) 258 clear 21:01 33 6 8 14 (NNE) 372 clear 22:01 33 5 7 345 (NNW) 229 clear 23:01 30 7 8 21 (NNE) 318 clear 00:01 32 7 8 15 (NNE) 289 clear 01:01 34 8 12 19 (NNE) 276 clear 02:01 35 5 12 34 (NE) 217 clear 03:01 35 64 11 29 (NNE) 235 clear 04:01 35 5 11 51 (NE) 230 clear 05:01 33 5 7 100 (E) 251 clear 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: 2.39. Current guide software version: GIm Ctrlv3.0b11.