From: "Camron Hastings" Subject: 3.5-meter Night Log 980827 Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 06:05:15 -0600 Thursday, August 27th 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5-Meter Observing Log ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- York G.Richards DIS 8/27-28 21:02 00:05 A.Tomaney A.Tomaney DIS 8/28 01:25 05:09 INST SCHEDULED OBS WEATH EQUIP DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UC03/R 21:02 00:05 3.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 UW06/R 01:25 05:09 3.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ACTIVITY LOG We opened tonight at 21:30 after fighting off the clouds. We had trouble with the cloud cam shutting off early on. It also required filling every 2 hours or so. I noticed the very wet condition of the dewer during fills, including the water dripping from the lens. Can this be good? The guider monitor program was not logging the guider data for display. I tried to stop the process, and start again using 'gdrstop' and 'gdrstart'. When I fingered the tcc35m, I did not see a login from DIONE, as I thought there should have been. Eventually, Eric Deutsch happened to log in, and he restarted the guider logging program, and the guider monitor responded normally after that until about 01:00. I tried to reset it with another gdrstop, gdrstart, which seems to have worked. I never got the X&Y FWHM plots of the guider, or the piston value plots to work until the second reset (02:00). It seemed that it kept locking up soon after the reset though. It ran smoothly from about 03:00 on till morning. I also had slit camera trouble. Many times, I simply lost the camera connection, and it required manually configuring the comm setup, and various parameters to get it running again. It would often run for 20-30 minutes, then suddenly terminate connection. Dew point sensor acted randomly again, at times jumping 5-10 degrees. I made frequent manual checks all night to base closure decisions on. Also, at times we received a message through the MC that an axis was no longer tracking, but everything was fine, we were still tracking. Odd. The second half of the night was less eventful. Many minor annoyances, but nothing major. It was noticed that the PSF was highly variable across the chip, from 2.8 pixels up to 4 pixels. There was a filter in the slit wheel for the second half, and I don't know how this would affect things. All else was smooth. - Camron Hastings Observers Comments Below --------------------------------------------------------------------- The end of a long run spread over the last few weeks. In the end I was open 44% of the time, which doesn't seem that great, but is actually about par for August. We got about 1.5 hours worth of spectra tonight. A note was posted to the DIS mailing list regarding the new gain on the red arm of DIS. Gordon FOCUS LOG August 27th 1998 Best Telescope Temp Wind Seeing Time Instrmt Focus Az El Air/Truss Dir MPH filter FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 21:40 DIS/Slit -100/6670 116 61 15.3/17.1 091 6.3 - ~1.8" 02:00 DIS -090/6640 56.7 72 14.6/15.3 015 7.9 I ~1.7" WEATHER LOG August 27th 1998 Wind Time Temp-F Dewp-F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip ------------------------------------------------------------------ 17:03 61 53 9 82 (E) 416 Cloudy Rain 18:03 61 53 11 78 (ENE) 446 Cloudy Rain 19:03 61 52 9 82 (E) 372 Ptly Cldy None 20:03 61 50 14 73 (ENE) 391 Ptly Cldy None 21:03 60 51 13 75 (ENE) 404 Ptly Cldy None 22:03 60 50 6 81 (E) 384 Clear None 23:03 61 48 7 71 (ENE) 328 Clear None 00:03 61 48 1 55 (NE) 337 Clear None 01:03 61 48 7 37 (NE) 382 Clear None 02:03 59 48 7 5 (N) 359 Clear None 03:03 59 49 7 10 (N) 429 Clear None 04:03 61 47 11 19 (NNE) 318 Clear None 05:03 59 47 15 55 (NE) 310 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: 2.42 Current guide software version: GIm Ctrl v3.0b 15.out