Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 07:06:41 -0700 (MST) From: Tia Hoyes Subject: 3.5m obslog 980302 MONDAY MARCH 2, 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Duric SPICAM 3/02 16:45 00:10 Diercks SPICAM 3/02 ----- ----- INST SCHEDULED OBS WEATH EQUIP DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B NM06/S 19:23 00:10 1.4 2.9 0 0 0 0.5 0 0 0 UW04/R 23:55 23:55 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 UW01/R 00:10 05:07 0 0 0 0 4.9 0 0 0 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG The telescope was opened at 17:55. Rich Rand, Neb Duric and Joe Collins were all on site to use spicam for imaging and driftscanning. They chose not to have me do a pointing model, as they wanted the time for imaging. At 21:45, I attemped to slew the telescope, but I kept getting a message that the tracking stopped and it would not slew. I tried to reinitialize, but this would not work either. I decided, as we were pressed for time, that I would run a telstop, and telrun and restart_mc. This worked, and we were able to slew again. I tried to begin guiding again, but the guider would not focus. I went from 50000 to 70000, and it would not let me go further than that limit. I finally settled for a bad focus at 70000, but it was good enough to guide with. Comments:Observing report for March 1-3, 1998 Duric, Rand, Collins SPIcam We could not get drift scanning to work. We were trying to drift scan in the E-W direction over an edge-on galaxy roughly aligned E-W. The galaxy is about 6' long, so we were doing drift scans of length 4192 (2x2 binned) pixels, starting from a sky position west of the galaxy and drifting at the minimum allowed rate. The main problem is in knowing where the telescope thinks it is pointing at the end of a drift scan. At the end, we tried to return to the position of the beginning of the drift scan (by issuing new RA and Dec commands), and take a normal exposure. We found that we were still pointed at the position of the end. Next we tried moving back to the nominal position of our galaxy, and found that we successfully could. We took another drift scan as before, and at the end moved back to the nominal galaxy position. This worked again. However, after the next drift scan, we moved to the nominal galaxy position without taking an exposure, and then moved to the beginning position. The following drift scan was all sky. The upshot is that after a scan, we could not reliably point to a given position. After these above attempts, we gave up. A second problem with drift scanning was that first image after the scan would have trailed images, as if either the CCD was still clocking out or the telescope was still drifting. One such image showed even worse problems. Best to just look at them. Two examples are in /export/images/duricn2/n20036.fits and n20048.fits at APO, and also in our anonymous ftp area (ftp to astro.phys.unm.edu, cd to pub/rjr, get n20036.fits and n20048.fits). This was the first image of the next drift scan. The lack of a movable guide stage is a big problem. The telescope itself had to be moved to find a guide star, meaning that we couldn't point where we wanted to. This is especially a problem because the FOV of SPIcam is so small (we were using 2" filters, so our unvignetted FOV was about 3.5', and our galaxy 6'). Furthermore, it seems that you can't guide if the guide star is at all close to the edge of the guide camera field. This restricts where you can point the telescope even more. Focusing the guide camera also seems to take a long time. At most telescopes, there is a video guiding system, and you can simply watch the guide star move in and out of focus, taking only a few seconds. Here it seems that guide camera exposures have to be taken at different focus values and the frames analyzed with imexam, before the best focus can be found. As already implied, the small FOV is a disadvantage, and 3x3" filters are not very standard, as far as I know. The scattered light problems are obviously well known. The SPIcam software is quite straightforward. A couple of useful things from KPNO's ICE that might be incorporated 1) a test exposure command that writes to, say, test.fits, 2) prompting for the object name, exposure time and filter after the object (or flat or whatever) command is given. This seems more fail-safe. The 10 micron all-sky camera is very useful. The second half of the evening, Alan Diercks was available for UW01. Strangely, Alan could not initialize SPICAM. I reset Spicam several times, cycled the power to the instrument, pulled the filter wheel out and replaced it, opened the side panel of SPICAM and looked for loose cables, and reset it several more times, as Alan tried to initialize it. It would not work. We discussed the options, and Alan thought it best to use the clear evening to obtain Lens Monitoring data. I observed 0957 and 1120. That went well. At 4:00, Alan suggested we do some tests with DIS and the Guider, comparing standard images that we would take with both instruments. We began taking exposures with DIS, which was working very well, and one image with the guider to test the focus. At this time, the focus was very far off, so I began to take gcam doread exposures with the guider. Nothing was changing, and I then noticed that the guider mac was hung. I restarted it, and tried to initialize the guider. I got a message stating that the "time limit exceeded, exposure aborted". I decided to cycle the power on the observing level to the guider. Then I restarted the guider mac, initialized the gcam and gmech, and set the gcam to 1. Again tried to take an exposure. Same message. I decided to cycle the power again, and restart the mac. This time I did a telstop and then a telrun to reinitalize everything and start from scratch. This did not work, and I got the same message again, even after initilizing. At this point, Alan gave up. I checked the temps. for DIS, and they were stable all evening. I spoke to Mark Klaene about all of the aforementioned problems at 6:45am during a phone call. (* means a trouble report has been issued or appended to) FOCUS LOG MARCH 2, 1998 Best Telescope Wind Seeing Time Inst Focus Az El Temp# Dir MPH filter FWHM " 18:45 GUIDER 70000 62.6 30.6 -1.2/0.66 317.6 11.2 empty 1.43 19:45 SPICAM -200(5877) 58.5 39.7 -1.1/-0.44 287.5 9.7 658 0.97 20:00 SPICAM -250(5840) 59.1 42.2 -1.1/-0.61 280.4 6.3 645 1.08 21:05 GUIDER 59000 41.1 48.4 -0.9/-1.48 266.9 5.9 empty 1.70 21:55 SPICAM -200(5828) 57.8 64.0 -0.7/-1.69 266.0 7.2 658 1.00 22:15 SPICAM -200(5828) 55.9 66.9 -1.0/-1.67 266.8 6.6 645 0.92 02:00 DIS -50(6038) -37.8 52.7 -0.6/-0.82 270.8 7.6 IN 1.16 # The first temp is air, the second is truss, both in degrees C. WEATHER MARCH 2, 1998 Wind Time Temp F Dewp. MPH. Dir. DUST Sky Precip. 16:01 33 0 13 303 (WNW) 296 clear none 17:01 34 2 5 334 (NNW) 290 clear none 18:01 31 2 5 293 (WNW) 394 clear none 19:01 30 4 6 334 (NNW) 281 clear none 20:01 30 5 7 268 (W) 303 clear none 21:01 30 6 7 268 (W) 479 clear none 22:01 31 7 7 264 (W) 490 clear none 23:01 31 7 9 268 (W) 287 clear none 00:01 32 9 10 266 (W) 357 clear none 01:01 31 9 8 264 (W) 362 clear none 02:01 31 9 10 268 (W) 349 clear none 03:01 30 8 9 271 (W) 358 clear none 04:01 30 7 7 257 (WSW) 622 clear none 05:01 30 8 12 268 (W) 559 clear none 06:01 30 8 11 272 (W) 416 clear none 07:01 31 10 12 273 (W) 364 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 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: 2.36 Current guide software version:GIm Ctrlv3.0b11. -Tia