From: "Camron Hastings" Subject: 3.5-meter Night Log 980822 Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 05:09:19 -0600 Saturday, August 22nd 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5-Meter Observing Log ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- E.Deutsch E.Deustch GRIMII 8/22-23 21:08 01:10 E.Turner C.Hastings DIS 8/23 01:40 02:15 York G.Richards DIS 8/23 02:15 05:05 INST SCHEDULED OBS WEATH EQUIP DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UW10 21:08 01:10 3.0 0 1.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 PU01 01:40 02:15 0.4 0 0.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 UC01 02:15 05:05 2.8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ACTIVITY LOG Telescope opened this evening at 19:05 to start cooling. It was found that GRIM would not respond to commands, so a quick power cycling cleared that up. Then we found that the frames were duplicating again, and nothing on the upper two frames. I power cycled GRIM a few times, and we regained imaging abilities. During the long focus runs though, we lost contact yet again for 2 frames, got a very strange looking image of all four frames, sort of like a surface map of the chip, then it cleared up on its own again. After 558 images, the hiccup happened again. Image n2.0559 displays the strange surface images. Again, it returned to normal after that. When focusing the guider, I ran into another problem. The guider is not responding to any mechanical commands, such as piston changes, filter changes, or even status requests. It always replies with a failed command because it timed out. The camera would take images, and that seems OK. I did not resolve this issue... Fought transient clouds all night. Gordon did get some usable science though. The lack of guider was a real pain though... -Camron Hastings Observer's Comments ---------------------------------------------------------------------- When we tried to start taking darks in the evening, we first got "grim icc not attached to hub" errors (or something like that). Camron fixed the problem by rebooting various things. After taking some darks we noticed that only the upper half of the chip was changing from exposure to exposure. Camron tried more things and eventually GRIM started taking good exposures. These instrument problems didn't cost too much time as they were noticed before sunset, but they did take a while to fix. Until GRIM is working perfectly again, it would be wise to check and exercise it well before starting time if possible. We had some difficulty finding a suitable focus star, but once that was squared away we obtained some good data. The first object was at high airmass (~2.6), so seeing there was around 1.5 arcsec. But the second object around 1.1 airmass yielded long stretches of consistently 0.65-0.75 arcsec images for 10 s K band exposures. A few science images at 0.59 arcsec were even obtained. Clouds began moving in and causing trouble 5:30 UT and at 6:30 UT we gave up poking through the clouds. One other glitch with GRIM was that every 100 images or so one peculiar frame would be seen. These peculiar images defy description. See /export/images/n2.0559.hhh for an example (nothing in the frame is a star). The peculiar images were immediately followed by normal images without any attempt to fix. Despite various problems, good data were obtained. -E.Deutsch ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FOCUS LOG August 22nd 1998 Best Telescope Temp Wind Seeing Time Instrmt Focus Az El Air/Truss Dir MPH filter FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:45 GRIMII +050/7075 186 67 13.5/14.8 073 14.7 K 0.80" 22:25 GRIMII +000/6841 211 48 13.4/13.9 079 15.1 K 0.69" 23:25 GRIMII +050/6798 249 71 13.5/13.6 076 13.3 K 0.53" 01:50 DIS +100/6774 188 60 14.3/13.5 002 8.4 r 1.29" WEATHER LOG August 22nd 1998 Wind Time Temp-F Dewp-F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 61 50 5 267 (W) 1198 Clear None 17:01 66 50 1 217 (SW) 1008 Clear None 18:01 63 46 0 128 (SE) 950 Clear None 19:01 60 42 8 84 (E) 1053 Clear None 20:01 58 42 15 72 (ENE) 1049 Clear None 21:01 57 41 15 77 (ENE) 1236 Clear None 22:01 56 39 11 84 (E) 1362 Ptly Cldy None 23:01 56 41 13 81 (E) 1641 Cloudy None 00:01 55 43 13 77 (ENE) 1926 Ptly Cldy None 01:01 57 41 10 44 (NE) 2045 Cloudy None 02:01 58 43 6 359 (N) 1519 Ptly Cldy None 03:01 53 42 6 2 (N) 1413 Ptly Cldy None 04:01 57 41 12 26 (NNE) 1448 Ptly Cldy None 05:01 55 42 6 352 (N) 1499 Ptly Cldy 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: 2.42 Current guide software version: GIm Ctrl v3.0b 15.out