Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 07:27:44 -0700 (MST) From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 990203 Apache Point Observatory, Sunspot, NM Wednesday, February 3rd, 1999 3.5-meter Night Observing Log Actual ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - B.Rodgers C.Hastings DIS 2/3 19:02 19:47 D.Duncan D.Duncan Echelle 2/3-4 20:17 03:40 WSMR WSMR Amber 2/4 04:10 08:00 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - UW03/S 19:02 20:02 0 - 0 - 1.0 - 0 0 - EN02/S 20:02 03:55 0 0 0 0 0.8 7.1 0 0 0 EN01/S 03:55 08:00 - 0 - 0 - 1.6 2.5 - 0 -------------- Activity Log -------------- * Indicates that a problem report has been issued. 1st Half Observing Specialist: N.C.Hastings I opened the dome at 18:25 to begin cooling and focus. Clear skies and all working smoothly. Very warm today. The 3.5m enclosure camera was repaired when Craig and I found a loose connection on one of the cables, it works better than ever now. The switchover was a little late because the echelle team let me run over for a few minutes. I ran into a delay observing for UW03's when I realized that the telmod.dat I was using was for the echelle. I switched this out and all was fine. The echelle went on with no problems and observing seemed to run smoothly for the rest of the night. I did think of one issue regarding the guider that I will send out to techstaff so as to not clog up the night log info. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan There were a couple of problems with the echelle during second half. * The shutter was apparently not opening for any but the first image in a series -- an hour of integration time was lost this way. * Also, there was a crash of the Obs1 Mac around 03:30 that occurred between taking a few individual full-frame guider images and switching to auto-expose on a sub-frame. * After the mac had crashed, there were problems communicating with the echelle guider -- since we were now working on AMBER, I only tried the obvious fixes (reboot guider mac, reset guider control, issue gcam init commands) before giving up. After 03:30, the tertiary was moved so that AMBER could be used. We made considerable progress in centering the boresight telescope. One interesting occurrence was that Arcturus, which should be extremely bright in the infrared, was not visible to the instrument, although Vega was. FOCUS LOG February 3rd 1999 Best Telescope Temp Wind Seeing Time Instrmnt Focus Az El Air/Truss Dir MPH filter FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:40 DIS +180(6502) 092 72 +6.4/+6.3 017 18 none 1.40" 19:50 Echelle -933(5416) 168 43 +5.4/+6.0 077 16 ND1 1.05" 00:10 Echelle -947(5520) 160 77 +4.9/+5.6 128 15 ND1 0.84" WEATHER LOG February 3rd 1999 Wind Time Temp-F Dewp-F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 44 14 3 350 (N) clear none 17:01 43 10 17 28 (NNE) clear none 18:01 42 6 22 11 (N) clear none 19:01 44 9 18 18 (NNE) clear none 20:01 44 11 14 9 (N) clear none 21:01 42 9 16 69 (ENE) clear none 22:01 44 1 4 105 (ESE) clear none 23:01 45 3 0 271 (W) clear none 00:01 42 6 11 133 (SE) clear none 01:01 38 12 13 131 (SE) clear none 02:01 38 12 21 127 (SE) clear none 03:01 39 11 21 138 (SE) clear none 04:01 39 10 22 151 (SSE) cirrus none 05:01 39 11 15 143 (SE) cirrus none 06:01 39 10 14 149 (SSE) cirrus none 07:01 37 11 20 154 (SSE) 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 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