From: "Camron Hastings" Subject: 3.5 meter Night Log 980607 Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 06:50:39 -0600 Friday, June 7th, 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5-Meter Observing Log ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- C. Stubbs Stubbs/Diercks SPIcam 6/7 21:50 00:55 M. Marley F/M/S* GRIM II 6/7 01:25 03:19 E. Turner C. Hastings SPIcam 6/7 03:49 04:14 * Forsythe/Marley/Stevens INST SCHEDULED OBS WEATH EQUIP DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DD01/R 21:50 00:55 - 0 - 3.1 - 0 0 - 0 NM07/S 01:25 03:19 - 0 - 1.9 - 0 0 - 0 PU01/S 03:49 04:14 - 0 - .4 - 0 0 - 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG Telescope was opened at 21:15 hours tonight, being delayed by high wind gusts, clouds, etc...Stayed so ALMOST all night!(See last paragraph!) First activity of the night, obs MAC crash. The debug window gave no process this time. It was the standard magnified screen with the normal debug window, though no offending application was mentioned this time. Also, the second obs Mac, which is running Sys-8, had a difficult time with REMARK. It took 10-12 connection attempts for the NMSU observers to connect. They did finally connect, and it was stable thereafter. Second problem of the night was the loss of Dryrot, the SPIcam control computer. Al Diercks was running a test to help straighten out the pixel shift on SPIcam, and Dryrot failed to return from the dead. It was finally learned, with Craig Loomis' help, that Dryrot's CMOS power appears to have failed and Dryrot did not have the correct startup values to reboot. This was remedied by typing "L1-A", then at the OK prompt, typing 'boot disk -s', which told Dryrot where to boot from. Boot proceeded normally therafter. Craig is aware of the problem, and is implementing solutions tomorrow. The sky stayed very cloudy all night. At about 04:30 hours we remounted GRIM in hopes of finding some bright stars or planets to make some training observations. Both Kerry and Denise, as well as myself, needed the practice with GRIM in preparation for tomorrow nights run. To our suprise, the clouds started breaking up at the last minute, and we were left with high stratus only. We began imaging various planets, and and then switched to some narrow band filters to run into twilight a bit. When trying a focus run on the standard star near Uranus, we were amazed to find we reached .59" seeing! No joke. Images on either side of focus were measured at around .64". Hard to believe, but you should see the last minute images of Uranus, the planet was very nicely separated from the rings!!! OBSERVER'S COMMENTS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The night was never photometric (total overcast early, persistent variable cirrus later), but the seeing was excellent during twilight. Our images of Uranus in the deep methane bands were the best our group has obtained from APO in 3 years of observing this object. The images are comparable in resolution to recently-published images from the IRTF. Many thanks to Camron for allowing Kerry and Denise to get good training time during twilight. Mark Marley ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I feel bad that both Chris Stubbs and Ed Turner's programs got clouded out, but the last minute observations we made of Uranus are beautiful. I learned a lot about GRIM this evening (morning), as well as Dryrot rebooting! Hope the weather holds. Thanks to Craig for the phone support. Camron ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FOCUS LOG June 7th, 1998 Best Telescope Temp Wind Seeing Time Instr Focus Az El Air/Truss Dir MPH filter FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 04:50 GRIM II -225/6449 186 39 8.2/8.9 269 19 2.36nm .59" ! No Lie ! WEATHER LOG June 7th, 1998 Wind Time Temp-F Dewp-F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 68 19 29 207 (SSW) 1285 Very Cldy None 17:01 66 14 21 267 (W) 1878 Very Cldy None 18:01 65 11 24 246 (WSW) 3374 Very Cldy None 19:01 63 6 24 239 (WSW) 4104 Very Cldy None 20:01 60 7 20 241 (WSW) 2452 Very Cldy None 21:01 58 8 21 221 (SW) 2043 Very Cldy None 22:01 57 9 13 268 (W) 1333 Very Cldy None 23:01 56 11 16 275 (W) 1232 Very Cldy None 00:01 54 11 15 272 (W) 1361 Very Cldy None 01:01 52 14 15 299 (WNW) 1067 Very Cldy None 02:01 51 18 16 271 (W) 1232 Very Cldy None 03:01 50 19 16 267 (W) 1232 Very Cldy None 04:01 49 17 25 272 (W) 1301 Cloudy None 05:01 47 18 23 280 (W) 1258 Ptly Cldy None 06:01 46 20 19 261 (W) 1193 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