Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 07:58:52 -0700 (MST) From: Karen Loomis Subject: 3.5-m obslog 991213 MONDAY DECEMBER 13, 1999 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Staff Deglman, McMillan guider/SPIcam 12/13-14 23:00 05:59 Loomis, Loomis INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B EN02/S 17:56 05:59 0.3 0.2 0.5 4.1 7.0 0 0 0 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG (* means a trouble report has been issued or appended to) 1st half observing specialist: Loomis, Loomis, McMillan, Deglman 2nd half observing specialist: Loomis, McMillan The telescope was opened at 23:00 MST, thanks to the hard work and extra hours put in by the daytime support staff. Opening was delayed by one hour due partly to high wind and partly to a controlled burn that was whipped up by the wind. This was about 1.5 miles north of the observatory. The collimation done by the day staff was quite good. On the sky, we adjusted the secondary tip tilt by (-200", +50") in x, y. Unfortunately, the focus (for SPIcam and the guider) is near the limit of the secondary mirror travel. The position of the secondary cage may need to be adjusted. A bonus of the new secondary mirror controller is that the speed at which the secondary changes focus appears to have increased by a factor of five. It now takes approximately 2.2 seconds for the piston to move 50 microns. It used to take 10 seconds. The actual time a requested focus move will take is reported by the TCC, so this information could be incorporated into Remark. The instrument rotator ran away fairly early on. To avoid more runaways, we measured a new velocity out scale and created an init_rot1.dat file to store this value. An error message appeared after each set inst " Failed to convert lock ID 1962934914 name TCC_ROT to mode 3 using flag 5. A new instrument block was obtained for the guide camera. It is close to the old one, although I am uncertain of some of the new values. Pointing model data was taken. All of the fields we checked had the star near the center of the chip. About 2/3 of the points were missed, however, due to the rotten seeing (even after adjusting the predicted fwhm). The data will be reduced when I locate the data files, which aren't where I expect them to be. The DIMM software hung a few times with an "I/O error 32". Seeing was quite poor. As much as 9" fwhm at one point (as measured on the guider). Even the DIMM was having some trouble. The seeing did improve after the start of twilight, and I took some more pointing data at that time. OBSERVER COMMENTS FOCUS LOG DECEMBER 13 1999 Wind Time Inst Focus Az El #Temp Dir MPH filt FWHM " 12:30 guider -3650(-3.6E6) 160 38 -3.4/-2.8 285 20 R+ND2 2.9 01:25 SPIcam -3550(-3.7E6) 154 56 -4.0/-3.7 285 23 R 2.0 #First temp is air, second temp is telescope. WEATHER DECEMBER 13 1999 Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip. 16:01 33 5 6 260 (W) 337 cirrus none 17:01 28 6 12 264 (W) 458 cirrus none 18:01 28 6 14 232 (SW) 484 cirrus none 19:01 28 5 8 205 (SSW) 555 cirrus none 20:01 28 5 15 249 (WSW) 560 clear none 21:01 28 8 24 269 (W) 732 clear none 22:01 29 8 33 269 (W) 781 clear none 23:01 27 8 23 281 (W) 1251 clear none 00:01 26 9 24 269 (W) 764 clear none 01:01 25 9 23 288 (WNW) 604 clear none 02:01 25 8 16 287 (WNW) 629 clear none 03:01 24 8 21 286 (WNW) 480 clear none 04:01 22 8 8 307 (NW) 699 clear none 05:01 22 8 8 351 (N) 808 clear none 06:01 20 9 16 350 (N) 889 clear none 07:01 18 8 24 6 (N) 738 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: 2.55b5. Current guide software version: GIm Ctrlv3.0b27. - Karen Loomis