Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 06:30:40 -0600 (MDT) From: Tia Hoyes Subject: 3.5m obslog 980627 SATURDAY JUNE 27, 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Stubbs Palunas GFP 6/27 20:20 01:05 Zucker Zucker SPICAM 6/27 01:15 03:50 Turner Hoyes SPICAM 6/27 03:53 05:25 INST SCHEDULED OBS WEATH EQUIP DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B UW09/O 21:57 01:10 2.1 0.5 0 0 0 0.6 0 0 0 UW06/R 01:10 03:36 2.4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 PU01/O 03:36 04:16 0.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG The telescope was open tonight at 18:15. Povilas Palunas and Meena Sahu were on site with the GFP instrument. They had the first half of the evening. Comments:We lost approximately 1 hour at the beginning of the night due to pointing problems. The pointing of the telescope had shifted 1'45" (!!) with respect to that in our last run, primarily toward the west. The reason we suspect (??) was work done on the tertiary mirror between our runs. Tia provided great support in getting us on track. The seeing was excellent till about 12:00, .65" in the focus frame, 1" in 15min exposures, after which it was about 1.4". Despite the early loss we collected some excellent data. Povilas Palunas and Meena Sahu Dan Zucker was available for the second half of the evening. Comments:We encountered both pointing and tracking problems tonight. Thanks to Tia we were able to recover from both. Slewing to equatorial Landolt fields we found we were off our positions from last night by 1 or 2 arcmin. Slewing to our target galaxy (dec +59) we found that we were approximately 2 arcmin E of our desired location at each of several fields we wanted to observe. Pointing error corrections and a magnasensor pass seem to have helped, but such large pointing errors coupled with slow data transfer times considerably decreased the efficiency of our observing. We also had another tracking glitch, which caused the guider to lose its star and trailed an image. Pointing error correction again seems to have helped the problem. Even aside from glitches, tracking is not nearly as good as it has been in the past -- stars in unguided 5 min images are noticeably elongated (vs. round stars in unguided 10 min exposures last fall). These tracking and pointing problems (the tracking problems have occurred every night for the past three nights) have been having a significant impact on our science. I observed for the Lens Monitoring Program. I observed 2237. No problems to report. Mr. Racoon has been caught. He is angrily in the cage. (* means a trouble report has been issued or appended to) FOCUS LOG JUNE 27, 1998 Best Telescope Wind Seeing Time Inst Focus Az El Temp# Dir MPH filter FWHM " 21:40 GFP +170(6808) 260.0 72.2 22.2/22.74 326.9 8.2 7965 0.6 21:50 GUIDER 55656 262.5 70.0 22.0/22.63 317.4 2.0 empty 1.21 01:25 SPICAM -400(6544) 181.6 57.7 20.8/21.31 191.4 2.4 V 0.95 04:00 SPICAM -250(6668) 144.7 55.3 21.0/20.59 221.3 7.2 g' 0.92 # The first temp is air, the second is truss, both in degrees C. WEATHER JUNE 27, 1998 Wind Time Temp F Dewp. MPH. Dir. DUST Sky Precip. 16:01 82 14 7 258 (WSW) 211 clear none 17:01 76 8 15 336 (NNW) 237 clear none 18:01 77 7 9 283 (WNW) 197 clear none 19:01 76 8 5 261 (W) 228 clear none 20:01 73 9 6 300 (WNW) 229 clear none 21:01 71 9 7 328 (NNW) 226 clear none 22:01 72 7 6 308 (NW) 260 clear none 23:01 72 5 5 281 (W) 212 clear none 00:01 70 5 6 206 (SSW) 290 clear none 01:01 71 13 4 231 (SW) 389 clear none 02:01 70 12 6 234 (SW) 369 clear none 03:01 69 12 3 259 (W) 365 clear none 04:01 70 12 7 229 (SW) 337 clear none 05:01 70 11 6 232 (SW) 248 clear none 06:01 68 11 3 257 (WSW) 332 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: 2.41a Current guide software version:GIm Ctrl v3.0b 15.out -Tia