From: "Camron Hastings" Subject: Correction on 3.5 Night Log 980621 Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 04:58:04 -0600 ** I had not calculated the times on the last log, this replaces... Saturday, June 21st, 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5-Meter Observing Log ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wyse G. Muerher SPIcam 6/20-21 21:56 00:55 Kron B. Nichol DIS 6/21 01:25 03:19 Turner C. Hastings SPIcam 6/21 03:49 04:14 INST SCHEDULED OBS WEATH EQUIP DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JH04/R 21:56 01:10 2.2 - 0 - 0 - 0 0 - JH01/R 01:10 03:34 2.4 - 0 - 0 - 0 0 - PU01/S 03:49 04:14 .4 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG The enclosure opened this evening at 20:50, clear skies, low wind, and low dust. Gerhardt Muerher started this evening with SPIcam, no problems, observing seemd to go smoothly all night. There was one odd occurrence though. Tonight, SPIcam's focus jumped 400 units! Focus for SPIcam is normally about -400 thru -300. Gerhardt stated that the images looked normal. I wonder if there has been some change in the light path that should be checked out. The DIS run was a bit odd, as the observers have only an xterm, no REMARK windows. There was some confusion about who was doing what in which window. The miscommunication led to them believing that I was going to do the observing, while they identified stars. I was unaware, and that wasted 1/2 hour while they thought I was doing the observing. Other miscommunications with regards to filters necessary and such led to more lost time, after which it smoothed out we got a few spectra before switching. As far as the lens monitoring, there were some more of the same probs as last night. The files were not getting written properly to tycho it seems, for sometimes I would try to read them and get "seek" errors in return. It seems that if I tried to abort the previous exposure this would happen to exposures after. Usually logging out of SPIcam and back in again would solve it. Another odd thing, on one focus exposure, I asked for 4 frames, as I was close to focus then, but when I viewed it, there were only 3 stars in it! This happened twice in a row! There were no clouds either. Odd..Anyway, we did get a 2 lens objects imaged though. OBSERVER'S COMMENTS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I had a fairly smooth observing run tonight (and last night). However there are a few hiccups to note: 1. I lost the ability to use all of evening twilight because of the disruption caused by a last minute grating change for the second half night. It would be nice if there were a way to lay claim (or establish priority) to twilight time abutting one's time, because this time is very important for calibration. 2. The focus did some big shifts during the beginning of the night. My first focus test in twilight gave -100 in I_mssso, within an hour it was up to 0 in I_mssso. Within 30min, or so it was at -250 for g_sdss (I doubt all of this could be due to the different filters). I don't know what caused these shifts. 3. The dewer warmed up about two hours earlier than expected. Hence I lost about 10minutes for the refill. Normally this would occur after change over. Gerhardt Meurer ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A frustrating night since the weather was perfect but many mis-communications between observer and observing specialist. Got two spectra in 2 hours of ~16th magnitude stars. Annoying ftp connection, tycho kept logging out my machine for no apparent reason. Finally, our schedule showed we had until 3:34 while the lastest schedule showed 3:19. This change in schedule was not communicated to us. If the schedule changes in anyway, the observer should be notified. Cheers Bob Nichol ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FOCUS LOG June 21st, 1998 Best Telescope Temp Wind Seeing Time Instr Focus Az El Air/Truss Dir MPH filter FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 21:30 SPIcam 0/6952 201 46 18.4/20.5 265 9 V .99" 22:10 SPIcam -250/6599 331 61 18.6/19.3 272 8 g' .84" 22:50 SPIcam -330/6530 349 53 18.5/18.8 269 9 I .68" 03:50 SPIcam -300/6444 133 51 16.1/16.5 315 13 g' .93" WEATHER LOG June 21st, 1998 Wind Time Temp-F Dewp-F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 74 17 12 272 (W) 296 Clear None 17:01 73 17 12 262 (W) 268 Clear None 18:01 72 17 16 265 (W) 378 Clear None 19:01 70 17 19 267 (W) 370 Clear None 20:01 66 18 17 267 (W) 370 Clear None 21:01 65 18 13 268 (W) 398 Clear None 22:01 65 18 8 269 (W) 549 Clear None 23:01 65 16 6 273 (W) 2163 Clear None 00:01 64 19 12 272 (W) 1780 Clear None 01:01 63 16 11 275 (W) 1206 Clear None 02:01 63 13 5 277 (W) 559 Clear None 03:01 62 13 14 313 (NW) 376 Clear None 04:01 61 15 10 311 (NW) 329 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