Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 06:25:15 -0700 (MST) From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 990214 SUNDAY FEBRUARY 14, 1999 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Diercks Diercks SPIcam 2/14-15 19:11 00:10 Hameed Hameed SPIcam 2/15 00:10 05:24 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B UW04/R 19:11 00:10 0 - 0 - 5.0 - 0 0 - NM05/R 00:10 05:24 1.0 - 0.5 - 3.7 - 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 17:30 MST. We had a stream of high clouds passing over the observatory all evening. Alan Diercks was able to observe through these, although it certainly wasn't photometric. 2nd half observing specialist: Russet McMillan The clouds got thicker shortly after midnight, and we closed from 01:00 to 02:00 due to clouds. Later in the morning there were patches of clear skies with sub-arcsecond seeing. *We saw repeated and variable noise problems with SPIcam, and eventually realized that these occurred more at certain rotator positions (+110 physical and its opposite) than at others. Salman Hameed allowed me some time to experiment with different rotations. The changes in noise with orientation seem to indicate a stressed cable somewhere. There was one piece of strangeness with the guider: it seemed to have great difficulty recognizing stars. In some cases, these were faint stars which were probably near some threshold. But at least one of those looked like a reasonably bright star. The automatic star-finding routine ignored it and tried to guide on a hot pixel instead. OBSERVER COMMENTS S. Hameed (NM05): Most of the night was non-photometric. I did get good data for about an hour with 0.9" seeing under photometric conditions. A weird banding noise pattern appeared on the chip in the middle of the run. Instrument at that time was at -90. This pattern disappeared when we switched the instrument back to 0 degrees. There weren't any other problems. Thanks to Russet for providing good support during the observing run. FOCUS LOG FEBRUARY 14 1999 Wind Time Inst Focus Az El #Temp Dir MPH filt FWHM " 18:40 SPIcam -185(6094) 191 57 4.8/5.7 252 8 B45 0.9 18:45 guider 52590(6202) 106 33 3.8/5.7 264 8 R 1.5 21:15 SPIcam -175(6062) 146 58 5.4/4.9 244 9 V45 1.1 21:15 guider 52577(6061) 146 59 5.3/4.9 242 12 R 1.2 00:30 SPIcam -200(6002) 28 78 6.1/5.0 242 17 NM645 1.0 02:15 SPIcam -200(5987) -80 77 5.0/4.7 202 14 NM645 1.1 #First temp is air, second temp is telescope. WEATHER FEBRUARY 14 1999 Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip. 16:01 45 5 6 265 (W) high clds none 17:01 44 8 11 238 (WSW) high clds none 18:01 41 9 8 250 (WSW) high clds none 19:01 38 9 7 257 (WSW) high clds none 20:01 39 6 11 267 (W) high clds none 21:01 41 5 10 247 (WSW) high clds none 22:01 41 3 8 261 (W) high clds none 23:01 42 1 10 262 (W) high clds none 00:01 43 1 9 249 (WSW) mstly cldy none 01:01 43 1 10 227 (SW) mstly cldy none 02:01 42 3 7 243 (WSW) mstly clr none 03:01 41 3 13 199 (SSW) clear none 04:01 41 5 14 208 (SSW) mstly clr none 05:01 39 11 11 190 (S) cirrus none 06:01 37 9 12 195 (SSW) cirrus 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