Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 05:52:03 -0600 From: tia@tycho.apo.nmsu.edu (Tia Hoyes) Subject: 3.5m obslog 980816 SUNDAY AUGUST 16, 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH York Stoughton DIS 8/16 19:05 01:00 Turner Hoyes SPICAM 8/16 01:25 02:03 Wyder Wyder SPICAM 8/16 02:10 04:30 INST SCHEDULED OBS WEATH EQUIP DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B UC05/R 21:16 01:10 3.9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 PU01/S 01:10 02:00 0 0.5 0 0 0.3 0 0 0 0 UW07/R 02:00 04:59 0 0 0 0 0 3.0 0 0 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG The telescope was opened tonight at 20:05. Chris Stoughton was the observer for UC05. COMMENTS:Not much to say, actually. The weather was fine, focus was good all night, spent the whole time taking spectra. Minor interruption when we had trouble offsetting, but you got that straightened out. We only lost 20 minutes or so. Thanks. It was a productive night. I was the observer for the Lens Monitoring, and a got a late start due to the rotator being lost again.* I finally did observe 2237. Ted Wyder was the observer for the second half of the evening. COMMENTS:Here's an accout of what happened tonight. All of the images I took are in the following directory on dryrot: /rot2/SPIdata/wyder/aug16. They are called aug16.0001.fits, aug16.0002.fits, aug16.0003.fits, etc. There were two expceptions: image numbers 6 and 7 are in the /export/images directory. I've tried to write down absolutely everything that happened. This is all from memory since I wasn't taking notes at all. Our time began around 8:15 UT. Once Tia had finished changing the filter wheel in spicam, I logged onto spicam and started a short focus sequence with the dofocus command. I realized that I had forgotten to change the path and filename. I then hit control-c a few times to abort the focus sequence. This dumped me out of spicam. I then logged on again. After setting the file, path, etc. to their correct values, I then started the focus sequence again. This time the image read out (aug16.0001.fits) but there were no stars visible in it. As in many of the subsequent images, the mean value was 175 ADU with a stabdard deviation of 0.6-0.7 ADU and the bad column normally at the right edge of the chip wasn't there. There was also a pattern of curved lines across the image at a very low level. We then asked Tia to reset spicam. I stayed logged into spicam while she did this. Once spicam was reset, I tried to do the focus sequence again. This time it seemed as though the exposure started but the "time left" didn't change. I then aborted the exposure and logged off of spicam. After loggin back in again, I tried just a normal 5 second stare mode image with the same result as the focus images. I then logged off of spicam again and Tia reset it again. Once it was reset, I logged back on and tried another 5 sec exposure with the same result. At this point I called Al Diercks. He tried various things to try and diagnos the problem. He suspected that perhaps some of the cables on spicam or dryrot were loose. Tia checked them and they looked fine. Then Al had me reboot dryrot. This went smoothly but didn't fix the problem. All of the bias and object image we took before and after rebooting dryrot looked similar. Finally we gave up and Tia closed the dome. Also, the cloud cam is still having trouble holding the liquid nitrogen.* Forecast:(4:30am) .TODAY...BECOMING PARTLY CLOUDY WITH A SLIGHT CHANCE OF AFTERNOON THUNDERSTORMS. .TONIGHT AND TUESDAY...A CHANCE OF EVENING AND AFTERNOON THUNDERSTORMS OTHERWISE FAIR SKIES. (* means a trouble report has been issued or appended to) FOCUS LOG AUGUST 16, 1998 Best Telescope Wind Seeing Time Inst Focus Az El Temp# Dir MPH filter FWHM " 20:30 DIS +100(7024) 73.1 30.0 15.9/16.89 125.5 11.2 empty **** 01:30 SPICAM -100(6482) 165.6 59.6 12.9/13.24 100.5 9.5 g' 1.20 ****Used the slit viewer to focus**** # The first temp is air, the second is truss, both in degrees C. WEATHER AUGUST 16, 1998 Wind Time Temp F Dewp. MPH. Dir. DUST Sky Precip. 16:01 59 47 7 189 (S) 399 thunderstorm rain 17:01 63 49 1 283 (WNW) 478 partly cloudy none 18:01 63 43 0 158 (SSE) 360 partly cloudy none 19:01 63 43 0 144 (SE) 356 partly cloudy none 20:01 62 42 2 117 (ESE) 342 partly cloudy none 21:01 60 41 14 115 (ESE) 411 light clouds none 22:01 57 39 14 108 (ESE) 499 light clouds none 23:01 57 40 19 109 (ESE) 571 clearing none 00:01 56 40 16 109 (ESE) 631 clear none 01:01 55 42 16 109 (ESE) 710 clear none 02:01 55 41 9 87 (E) 652 clear none 03:01 58 38 11 60 (ENE) 648 clear none 04:01 57 38 9 38 (NE) 565 clear none 05:01 56 40 10 36 (NE) 485 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: 2.42a Current guide software version:GIm Ctrl v3.0b 15.out -Tia