Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 06:27:53 -0700 (MST) From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 990220 Apache Point Observatory, Sunspot, NM Saturday, February 20th, 1999 3.5-meter Night Observing Log Actual ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- B.Gillespie C.Rockosi Echelle 2/19-20 19:15 05:18 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EN02/S 19:15 05:18 0 0 0 0 6.4 3.6 0 0 0 -------------- Activity Log -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: N.C.Hastings We opened at 17:30 for cooling. Connie had worked on various systems during the day, so we were able to run the new ICC tonight, although we were still running the older version of REMARK. The heat pump in the computer room gave out. Craig fixed it promptly by finding the cause, frozen exchange radiators... Seeing monitor is up and running thanks to Armin's dedicated work. It is really accurate, and quite useful already! Can't wait to see it integrated into the guider display window! 2nd Half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Second half turned out to be a real pain for observing, but excellent practice for the seeing monitor, because the temperature and wind kept changing radically. The temperature swings allowed for some fascinating comparison with the "tree" brightness on the cloud camera. Each time the wind dropped and shifted to the west, the seeing improved to nearly 1 arcsecond, then increased to 2 or 3 arcseconds as the wind returned to the east. The secondary's automatic adjustments for temperature are clearly inadequate for the echelle, as can be seen by the wide changes in focus logged below. The seeing measurements from focus frames are probably an underestimate because the echelle guider is so oversampled that the profiles are hard to fit in IRAF. Either that or we have to think of some explanation why we sometimes measured much better seeing than the seeing monitor. The echelle guider's pixel scale *is* .151, right? * We had trouble with all our attempts to focus after 02:50. The efocus routine bombed out with the complaint "No stars found in image," followed by {: tccinfo=" "} A few times this appeared to be because the star was saturated or a gross donut, but it also occurred repeatedly when a visual inspection of the image showed reasonable counts in a mildly out-of-focus star. OBSERVER COMMENTS C. Rockosi (EN02): The pointing was wonderful all night, with no offsets greater than 12 arcseconds required to get the star on the slit. The tracking was excellent for objects near the zenith, not so good for targets lower down. FOCUS LOG February 20th 1999 Best Telescope Temp Wind Seeing Time Instrmnt Focus Az El Air/Truss Dir MPH filter FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:50 Echelle -844(5466) 277 62 2.6/5.0 329 06 ND2 1.77 21:40 Echelle -1175(4952) -013 37 -0.7/0.0 073 13 ND1 2.53 23:30 Echelle -984(4997) 220 59 0.0/-1.5 54 10 clear 1.15 00:10 Echelle -880(5137) 234 53 1.7/-1.0 265 2 clear 1.19 01:00 Echelle -979(5037) 348 51 -2.2/-1.2 66 12 clear 1.24 03:05 Echelle -800(5317) 205 42 2.9/0.3 252 6 ND2 04:45 Echelle -950(5111) 294 64 1.2/0.8 164 7 ND2 0.87 05:15 Echelle -1000(5225) 162 31 1.6/0.8 182 7 ND1 1.27 WEATHER LOG February 20th 1999 Wind Time Temp-F Dewp-F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip ------------------------------------------------------------------ 17:01 45 14 8 293 (WNW) 874 clear none 18:01 38 14 8 311 (NW) 861 clear none 19:01 36 15 0 76 (ENE) 953 clear none 20:01 35 15 2 3 (N) 1020 clear none 21:01 30 16 11 67 (ENE) 1275 clear none 22:01 34 11 13 52 (NE) 1066 clear none 23:01 29 16 10 78 (ENE) 1341 clear none 00:01 35 14 1 262 (W) 919 clear none 01:01 29 15 9 77 (ENE) 1163 clear none 02:01 32 14 1 214 (SW) 1066 clear none 03:01 37 15 5 260 (W) 1007 clear none 04:01 37 14 6 242 (WSW) 835 clear none 05:01 36 14 6 185 (S) 889 clear none 06:01 34 16 6 150 (SSE) 953 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: 2.52 Current guide software version: GIm Ctrl v3.0b 17.out - NCH, RM