Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 07:04:31 -0700 (MST) From: Charles Corson Subject: 3.5m obslog 980311 Wednesday March 11, 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Rodgers DIS 3/11 19:00 20:40 Corson DIS 3/11 20:40 21:10 Mazeh Grim 3/11 21:10 03:10 Reiss DIS 3/11 03:26 06:00 INST SCHEDULED OBS WEATH EQUIP DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B UW03 R 19:30 20:30 0 1.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 PU01 O 20:30 21:10 0 0.6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 UC13 R 21:10 03:14 0 6.1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 UW05 R 03:14 04:56 0 1.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG Bernadette Rodgers et al., observed asteroid XF-11 with DIS. A dozen exposures covering 30min were made. Eric Deutsch has made a web page and jpeg movie of the images, www.astro.washington.edu. Today's New York Times, on the web, has made reference to this page in their article about the asteroid. Bernadette also observed her program but in abbreviated fashion. One exposure was lost due to what we believe was a command collision, an image is lost as it reads out if a command is sent to DIS. This occurs often enough that some protection *should* be programmed into REMARK, or Mirella. I observed for the Lens Monitoring Program and obtained a minimal data set. I also observed for most of Tsevi Mazeh's run as his connection in Israel was unreliable at best. Observations were aslo delayed by the Grim Mac waiting to download the latest image to the MC. The problem was not at the Mac, but the MC. I could not do *anything* from with the MC during these delays. The command would be accepted, but with no reply until the delay was over. I have no idea what might have caused the problem, it occured prior and after restarting the hub. Keeping up with focus was also difficult. David Reiss observed with Dis for the last hour or so of the evening. One Sn was still available for spectral observation and was observed. Pointing was below nominal tonight. A remap of the azimuth axis was performed ealier today and all of the drive surfaces were extensively cleaned. An updated pointing map may be warranted. OBSERVER COMMENTS Bernadette Rodgers: Tonight's run was quite exciting! We got about a dozen images of the newly determined 'killer asteroid' with live media coverage here in the UW control room. I think Charles was having some trouble with pointing and focusing, but he masked it well from our end. We were able to clearly identify the asteroid and Eric produced an image showing it moving across the sky during the 30 mins of elapsed time. Thanks to Charles and everyone who helped out- APO truly shined! Thanks to some schedule reshuffling, I also got about 20 minutes for my program, which allowed me to do a rather abbreviated run. One problem of note- my last image did not copy over to tycho. This happened to me once last week as well- the image reads out, but then disappears. We may have issued a move command while it was copying over, which may have been the cause, but that's not much consolation. Tsevi Mazeh: -- David Reiss: -- FOCUS LOG Best Telescope Wind Seeing Time Inst Focus Az El #Temp Dir MPH filter FWHM " 19:05 Dis -390(5785) 188 61 -1.2/3.8 135 9 r 2.9 20:50 Dis -150(5928) 31 60 -2.3/-1.3 139 8 r 1.8 21:25 Grim -90(6014) 7 78 -2.3/-1.3 150 10 J 0.94 23:00 Grim 0(6115) 230 60 -1.5/-0.8 180 15 J 0.89 03:35 Dis -50(6024) 175 63 -1.2/-2.6 275 5 - 1.2 #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 41 12 10 318 (NW) 291 clear 17:01 41 14 10 229 (SW) 491 clear 18:01 34 12 1 187 (S) 662 clear 19:01 31 11 13 124 (SE) 929 clear 20:01 29 11 14 127 (SE) 1207 clear 21:01 28 12 10 137 (SE) 1068 clear 22:01 29 11 7 188 (S) 1199 clear 23:01 28 12 10 178 (S) 1052 clear 00:01 26 12 9 171 (S) 945 clear 01:01 28 12 4 182 (S) 949 clear 02:01 28 12 5 180 (S) 991 clear 03:01 30 64 1 231 (SW) 919 clear 04:01 31 11 8 281 (W) 1010 clear 05:01 31 11 9 311 (NW) 917 clear 06:01 31 12 10 309 (NW) 815 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.