From: "Camron Hastings" Subject: 3.5-meter Night Logs 980601 Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 07:22:58 -0600 Monday, June 1st, 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5-Meter Observing Log ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- York* G. Richards DIS 6/01-2 21:46 03:36 Turner C. Hastings SPIcam 6/02 03:36 04:16 * C.York traded her observing time with Brad Holden and Gordon Richards. The scheduled instrument was SPIcam, but Richards/Holden wanted DIS, so the change was made, and taken from their obs time. SPIcam was mounted and in service on time for lens monitoring. INST SCHEDULED OBS WEATH EQUIP DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ----------------------------------------------------------------------- UC01/R 21:46 03:36 0 1.0 0 0 1.9 2.9 0 0 0 PU01/O 03:36 04:16 .7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG (Better print this one out and read it before bed!) Shutters opened around 20:30 hours, sky was clear, dust was lower than the past weeks. Gordon Richards (at Fermi) and Brad Holden ( at UChicago) took over the obs time for Connie York. When Gordon started his lamp cals, we started having axis read problems, multiple errors, and continual failures. A quick call to Karen Gloria helped to solve, or reduce, the axis problems. We ended up rebooting the TCC (tcc35m), restarting the MCnode, and reinitializing. That seemed to solve the communication errors with the axes, for the moment. As the night progressed, we began having more and more axis failures, usually attributed to the rotator, or so it seemed from the messages quickly racing across the 'tcc' and status windows. This problem was counteracted by 'axis init'! The axis init was only a temporary solution, as we had probably 15 axis failures. During the worst of this, I noticed a lot of commotion up on the 3rd floor observing deck via the video monitor. It looked like someone with a flashlight and objects flying in front of the camera. I decided it required a physical check, so we kicked poor Gordon off for the moment and headed up. I was suprised at the 30-50 moths swarming near the quartz lamps! They were in almost everything, crawling around the DIS wiring, and all over. Since the shutters were closed at this time due to Gordon's lamp calibrations, we opened the shutters and 'vented' the insects. It seemed to help. After we opened officially, and Gordon's frustration reached a limit due to the continued and continual axis failures, we decided on another physical check of the various axis components. When the door to the 3rd floor was opened, we were blasted with papers, plastic, and anything else the wind would lift! It seems that the visiting instrument personnel left out some plastic bags and papers they thought would be safe overnight. They must have been unaware of the windtunnel effect the enclosure has, even in low winds. Again, we had to kick Gordon off while we shut up the telescope and shutters and effected a cleanup of the enclosure. Papers were removed from ALL over and under. Also noticed during this inspection was a frayed cabled on the rotator, and the fact that when DIS had rotated 180, it seems to have slipped slightly on the rotator. The two registration mounts that flush with pins had a small air gap, where none usually exists. This is checked when DIS is mounted. DIS was re-mounted, and we re-opened. Continued to have axis problems until Gordon finally gave up after he started having DIS problems as well, and handed over to Brad. Brad was watching this whole series of events through his REMARK interface at UChicago, so he was quite frightened by now. His run was no better. His first images were old spectra from Gorgon's run, and we could not get rid of them. We attempted to cure this by rebooting Mirella, the DIS controller, as it had a lot of garbage on the screen regarding bad memory areas and such. After that reboot, we restarted every window and session we could think of, and this seemed to work. The next images Brad took came out, but when he switched to spectral mode, nothing! We have no idea, just a bias frame was all that could be read. He gave up and just imaged two objects quickly. It should be mentioned that Brad was not without axis problems, but significantly less than Gordon. This may be partially due to the fact that I seemed to notice a correlation with the guider. Now, I don't know how this system is put together yet, as I am only 14 days old here, but we were having guider probs all night. No matter what we tried, it seemed that the guider could never find a star, even after we looked at the field ourselves and saw plenty of candidates. We tried focus routines, enlarging the acquisition field, removing the filter, increasing the exposure time, no luck. Maybe 2-3 successful guides all night. Anyway, I noticed that the axis failures seemed to be coming when we started to fight with the guider after slewing to a new object, so I quit using the guider with Brad, and we also had noticeably fewer axis failures. Coincidence? I think not! Now comes the happy ending to this LONG story... Tonight we started a new LENS MONITORING program. New targets, and a switch of instruments from DIS to SPIcam. This went perfect! We obtained all the data requested on the primary target, plus a little extra for good measure. SPIcam worked wonderfully. Yours Truly, Camron Hastings P.S. Problem reports filed! :) OBSERVER COMMENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------- Let's just say that this wasn't a banner night. Gordon Richards ------------------------------------------------------------------- As a night with nice seeing almost completely lost to instrument and telescope problems. The telescope lost tracking a large number of times and I had several problems with DIS seemingly not being in the setup I requested. Twice I asked for an image and got a previously taken spectrum, one of these times was after the instrument was homed by the assistant. I took 2 ten minute spectra which were hand-guided and got no data, not even skylines. I suspect the instrument was not actually in the correct setup to generate spectra. All in all, in a 3 hour period I obtained 2 useful 10 minute images. I suspect July will not be coming soon enough. B. Holden ------------------------------------------------------------------- FOCUS LOG June 1st, 1998 Best Telescope Temp Wind Seeing Time Instr Focus Az El Air/Truss Dir MPH filter FWHM " ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 01:20 DIS -250/6583 275 68 17.7/17.8 343 1.0 r .98" 03:50 SPIcam -250/6556 114 37 17.0/17.3 18 14.8 u' 1.70" 03:52 SPIcam -225/6626 115 38 17.2/17.1 14 17.8 g' 1.20" *The first temp is air, the second is truss, both in degrees Celsius WEATHER LOG June 1st, 1998 Wind Time Temp-F Dewp-F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 74 17 15 259 (W) 1376 Clear None 17:01 72 15 9 283 (WNW) 1141 Clear None 18:01 72 13 16 266 (W) 923 Clear None 19:01 71 9 18 268 (W) 756 Clear None 20:01 68 7 12 259 (W) 699 Clear None 21:01 65 14 18 234 (SW) 562 Clear None 22:01 65 13 8 251 (WSW) 592 Clear None 23:01 65 12 7 267 (W) 738 Clear None 00:01 63 8 11 282 (WNW) 749 Clear None 01:01 63 8 7 343 (NNW) 853 Clear None 02:01 63 7 9 18 (NNE) 804 Clear None 03:01 63 7 14 17 (NNE) 647 Clear None 04:01 63 5 16 1 (N) 704 Clear None 05:01 62 12 20 31 (NNE) 409 Clear None 06:01 62 13 17 9 (N) 353 Clear None 07:01 63 14 12 0 (N) 323 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: 2.41a Current guide software version: GIm Ctrl v3.0b 15.out -Camron Hastings & Tia Hoyes