Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1999 06:19:00 -0700 (MST) From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 990213 Content-Length: 2951 SATURDAY FEBRUARY 13, 1999 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Dalcanton Dalcanton SPIcam 2/13-14 19:10 00:10 Hameed Hameed SPIcam 2/14 00:10 05:25 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B UW12/R 19:10 00:10 0.8 - 0 - 4.2 - 0 0 0 NM05/R 00:10 05:25 1.2 - 0 - 4.1 - 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: Karen Gloria The telescope was opened at 17:15 MST. We had clear skies but some dust came in late evening. The telescope was closed from 22:40 to 23:30 due to dust. We had to observe with the pressurization fans running for much of the rest of the time. 2nd half observing specialist: Russet McMillan Second half was clear, but the dust kept flirting around the closure limit. We closed from 04:00 to 05:10 due to dust. While the dome was closed with the press fans on, the indoor dust counts were much lower than outside. It was necessary to take the hand-held counter out frequently to recheck the conditions. After re-opening, I noticed that the indoor counts were higher than the hand-held counter had indicated. I tried measurements with the hand-held unit at ground level near the cloud camera at the same time that the interior unit was counting. I found that the counts from the hand-held unit were 15% lower. This could be due to differences in the two units (the hand-held one runs off a battery) or differences in position. It would be nice to get the new unit mounted on the met tower as soon as possible, since this is oviously of major concern during the Spring. * At 00:58, we had trouble making a slew -- the telescope would refuse to move, the axes stopped tracking, and I got the error message "slew computation did not converge in 30 iterations." Camron had reported a similar problem a month or so ago, apparently because the telescope couldn't decide whether or not to unwrap. In this case, the target field was at a very high altitude (82 degrees), but still below the limits. After I slewed to a different location, it *was* possible to complete a slew to the target field -- so the coordinates themselves were not a problem. However, because of the high altitude, I recommended observing something else until that target had descended a little. Shortly after we closed and re-opened, the guider image display on the guider monitor stopped updating. The rest of the information, including the cloud camera image and the graphs of guide star FWHM, etc., were fine. OBSERVER COMMENTS S.Hameed (NM05): Over all the night went OK. I lost about 1 hour due to high dust counts. The seeing ranged from 1.3"-1.6". Most of the second half was photometric except for 45 minutes when a small group of wandering clouds decided to go on top of APO. The telescope and SPIcam worked perfectly. FOCUS LOG FEBRUARY 13 1999 Wind Time Inst Focus Az El #Temp Dir MPH filt FWHM " 18:35 SPIcam -250(6015) 184 67 4.7/6.2 148 15 I 0.84 18:40 guider 51415(6008) 188 67 4.6/6.1 151 14 R 1.2 20:00 SPIcam -250(6226) 113 11 3.7/4.3 179 15 I 2.7 00:30 SPIcam -275(5884) 104 52 2.5/2.3 155 19 NM645 2.0 02:50 SPIcam -200(5921) -57 66 3.5/2.5 153 15 NM645 1.3 #First temp is air, second temp is telescope. WEATHER FEBRUARY 13 1999 Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip. 16:01 46 2 12 130 (SE) clear none 17:01 44 2 14 145 (SE) clear none 18:01 42 -1 16 135 (SE) clear none 19:01 41 -1 16 149 (SSE) clear none 20:01 38 5 13 174 (S) clear none 21:01 39 22 16 171 (S) clear none 22:01 38 8 16 175 (S) clear none 23:01 37 15 12 177 (S) clear none 00:01 37 11 18 155 (SSE) clear none 01:01 39 22 11 179 (S) cirrus none 02:01 38 23 11 180 (S) clear none 03:01 39 20 11 162 (SSE) clear none 04:01 36 18 6 179 (S) clear none 05:01 41 16 11 211 (SSW) clear none 06:01 39 19 12 210 (SSW) 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: 2.52 Current guide software version: GIm Ctrlv3.0b17. - Karen Gloria, Russet McMillan