From: "Camron Hastings" Subject: 3.5-meter Night Log 980921 Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 07:17:47 -0600 Monday, September 21st 1998 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5-meter Observing Log ACTUAL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- B.Gillespie K.Gloria SPIcam 9/21 20:24 20:54 R.Walterbos C.Hoopes SPIcam 9/21-22 20:54 01:10 B.Skelton B.Skelton SPIcam 9/22 01:10 05:29 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- INST SCHEDULED OBS WEATH EQUIP DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EN00/S 20:24 20:54 0.5 - 0 - 0 - 0 0 - NM01/S 20:54 01:10 4.3 - 0 - 0 - 0 0 - UW01/R 01:10 05:29 3.8 - 0 - 0.5 - 0 0 - -------- ACTIVITY LOG -------- 1st half observing specialist: Karen Gloria The telescope was opened at 19:05 under partly cloudy skies. Charles Hoopes was onsight to observe for NM01 with SPIcam. He took twilight flats then allowed me some time to acquire a new instrument block for SPIcam (I rezeroed the rotator in the afternoon). This new block was sorely needed, as the center of the chip was over 32 arcsec away from where it was before the camera went back to UW. I used Alan Diercks' scripts for taking the data, and that saved a lot of time. The fit for the scale and orientation was very good, but the number crunching routine did something strange with the center of rotation data, so I calculated that by hand. Charles Hoopes and I tested the new instrument block and it works pretty well. I logged the time I used as drop in engineering. 2nd half observing specialist: Camron Hastings I took over while everything was running smoothly. Brooke came on at 01:10 and began focus routines. All ran fine, even better than expected at times. She was imaging in M33, and at the highest we were pointed up to 88 degrees in elevation. Never have I seen the telescope track well above 85, and we were obtaining 1" in 120sec. exposures that were perfectly round! I think all the work on the rotator these last weeks may have paid off in this area. After we crossed the meridian the rotator could not keep up with the rotation necessary to flip the telescope from rising to setting, and the field began drifting off. We decided to head to a standard until it had set for a bit. We found the telescope hopelessly lost. Dan Long was in the SDSS room and had an idea. It seems that the huge corrections that the guider was making while trying to correct the slow rotator while crossing the meridian get stuck in the object block. We found this value by issuing a "show block obj" command and scrolling up to the "Caliboff1" variable. Here we found a 4.8' offset where a few seconds are normal! A simple "offset calib/pabs" removed this huge offset, and we were again pointing close to where we should have been. A local pointing correction fixed any remaining error. -------- OBSERVER COMMENTS ------- Brooke Skelton (UW01): Tonight was *very* successful. Hopefully tomorrow night will be as nice, and I will have completed a good (in several cases, great) set of narrow-band images of GHRs for my thesis. We followed M33 all night; because its declination closely matches the latitude of APO we got to air masses below 1.001. And, believe it or not, still tracked! Nominal seeing was 0.9-1.0 arcsec, and stayed at 1.1-1.2 with circular images (180 sec exposures) until just past zenith. At which time the pointing got a bit messed up, but Camron and Dan fixed it. THANK YOU to the folks who've been improving the rotator!! This was so much better than last year when I couldn't get nearly so close to zenith. FOCUS LOG September 21st 1998 Best Telescope Temp Wind Seeing Time Instrmt Focus Az El Air/Truss Dir MPH filter FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:10 SPIcam -250(6442) 182 58 13.9/15.4 258 12 V 1.40" 21:15 Guider 47861(6440) 13 65 14.0/14.0 271 9 none 1.60" 21:50 SPIcam -200(6388) 1 66 13.7/13.7 259 7 V 1.10" 21:50 Guider 48764(6388) 1 66 13.7/13.7 259 7 R 1.50" 22:30 SPIcam -165(6402) 346 65 13.6/13.1 265 9 V 1.10" 23:20 SPIcam -100(6473) 335 62 13.5/13.1 264 10 V 1.00" 01:30 SPIcam -050(6558) -87 58 13.2/12.9 267 11 H-beta 0.90" 01:35 SPIcam -100(6513) -86 56 13.2/12.9 268 9 OIII 0.85" 01:40 SPIcam -100(6513) -85 54 13.3/13.1 268 8 4750 0.90" 01:45 Guider 49041(6528) -85 54 13.3/13.2 269 7 none 1.14" WEATHER LOG September 21st 1998 Wind Time Temp-F Dewp-F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 62 40 14 267 (W) 578 ptly cldy none 17:01 63 40 20 253 (WSW) 523 ptly cldy none 18:01 61 40 13 270 (W) 604 ptly cldy none 19:01 57 40 15 269 (W) 729 ptly cldy none 20:01 57 40 11 261 (W) 788 ptly cldy none 21:01 57 40 13 258 (WSW) 728 ptly cldy none 22:01 57 40 13 249 (WSW) 765 ptly cldy none 23:01 56 41 10 266 (W) 768 ptly cldy none 00:01 56 41 9 263 (W) 809 mstly clr none 01:01 56 40 11 270 (W) 787 clear none 02:01 56 36 9 269 (W) 726 clear none 03:01 56 36 8 273 (W) 676 clear none 04:01 56 35 7 272 (W) 730 clear none 05:01 56 36 2 269 (W) 773 clear none 06:01 54 36 0 172 (S) 785 clear none 07:01 54 36 3 171 (S) 787 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: 2.42a Current guide software version: GIm Ctrl v3.0b 15.out - Karen Gloria, Camron Hastings