From: "Camron Hastings" Subject: 3.5-meter Night Log 980918 Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 06:10:03 -0600 Friday, September 18th 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5-Meter Observing Log ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- E.Deutsch E.Deutsch GRIM II 9/18-19 20:28 00:20 E.Turner C.Hastings SPIcam 9/19 00:20 01:10 T.Wyder T.Wyder SPIcam 9/19 01:10 05:27 INST SCHEDULED OBS WEATH EQUIP DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UW10/R 20:28 00:20 3.9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 PU01/S 00:20 01:10 0.8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 UW05/R 01:10 05:27 4.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ACTIVITY LOG ------------ 1st half observing specialist: Karen Gloria The telescope was opened at 19:10 MDT. *We planned to use SPIcam tonight, but the shutter isn't working. Alan Diercks, Gene Magnier and Peter Doherty are working on it from offsite at this time. Gene worked up a temporary solution for the second half of tonight, so Ted Wyder should be able to use SPIcam for his program. The problem appears to be in firmware and should be fixable remotely by Peter Doherty. If so, SPIcam will be fully operational for Sunday night's observers. Eric Deutsch reverted to the GRIM2 portion of his observing program and got consistent sub-arcsecond seeing in K-band. Some images were as small as 0.56 arcsec! 2nd half observing specialist: Camron Hastings I took over at 23:30, clear, photometric conditions. Gene had just finished some work arounds for the SPIcam shutter problem, so I mounted it and proceeded to use it for PU01. Focusing went fine and I obtained some nice sub-arcsecond images of lens object 2237. Ted Wyder took over at 01:10 to clear skies. All seemed to go well until a few trailed images appeared. I re-inited the motors, and made a local pointing correction, and that seemed to fix the problem. Thanks to Gene for the quick, last minute, late night scripting to get SPIcam back on the road again. And thanks to Al Diercks and crew for getting the CryoTiger set up here at APO. (By the way Al, there is a bit of ice forming on that return line, about 16 inches. Not a real hassle yet though.) It appears that once the firmware prob is fixed by Peter, we will be 100% again! It was very nice having SPIcam back again, even at 70% capacity! Observer Comments ----------------- E. Deutsch (UW10): Scheduled instrument was SPIcam, but during twilight it was determined that the shutter was not responding. Since the problem was not quickly solvable, we switched to GRIM and I observed a different program while attempts were made by Al, Gene, and Karen to set SPIcam working again. With GRIM, the seeing was outstanding. Nearly all images below 0.8, many below 0.7, and a few around 0.55 arcsec. It never seems to go below 0.55 arcsec, though... GRIM and telescope performed flawlessly, I got great data. SPIcam seemed ready to go again at the end of the first half for the next observer. The locally installed Remark 2.42 complained that the current version should be 2.42a, but no problems were encountered. T.Wyder (UW05): Overall everything went smoothly and I was able to get a number of good images. Many thanks to Al Diercks and Gene Magnier for getting SPIcam running by the second half of the night. We were able to get the shutter to open but the exposure times were not very accurate. The only problem I encountered is that once in a while the stars in an image would be trailed slightly. Then in the next image, everything would be fine again. (* means a trouble report has been issued or appended to) FOCUS LOG September 18th 1998 Best Telescope Temp Wind Seeing Time Instrmt Focus Az El Air/Truss Dir MPH filter FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:30 GRIM2 -075(6804) 221 49 13.7/14.8 195 4 K f/10 0.63" 00:55 SPIcam -050(6536) 209 57 13.0/12.9 190 8 SDSS r' 0.91" 01:20 SPIcam -075(6489) 067 63 12.1/12.8 200 7 John-R 0.78" 01:25 Guider 49454 067 63 12.1/12.8 200 7 None 0.95" WEATHER LOG September 18th 1998 Wind Time Temp-F Dewp-F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 64 48 6 275 (W) 272 Clear None 17:01 60 44 1 272 (W) 305 Clear None 18:01 63 42 1 265 (W) 313 Clear None 19:01 58 43 5 250 (WSW) 261 Clear None 20:01 57 43 2 206 (SSW) 310 Clear None 21:01 56 43 3 221 (SW) 273 Clear None 22:01 55 44 0 194 (SSW) 297 Clear None 23:01 55 44 6 183 (S) 349 Clear None 00:01 56 43 6 183 (S) 360 Clear None 01:01 56 42 9 192 (SSW) 350 Clear None 02:01 55 42 8 212 (SSW) 365 Clear None 03:01 55 42 7 214 (SW) 341 Clear None 04:01 55 41 5 248 (WSW) 381 Clear None 05:01 55 41 5 257 (WSW) 471 Clear None 06:01 56 40 6 264 (W) 440 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 - Karen Gloria, Camron Hastings