Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 06:13:36 -0600 (MDT) From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 990508 FRIDAY MAY 7, 1999 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Staff Gloria, McMillan spicam, echelle 5/7-8 21:22 01:45 Morgan, Wang Turner Turner,Pindor,Wyithe DIS 5/8 01:45 04:38 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B EN01/S 21:22 01:45 0 - 0 - 4.4 - 0 0 - PU04/S 01:45 04:38 - 0 - 0 - 2.9 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: R. McMillan, K. Gloria The telescope was opened at 17:30 MDT to partly cloud conditions, which improved as the night went on. Spicam was mounted so that we could continue the comparison of pointing and mirror positions that was begun on the previous night. One thing we confirmed is that the tertiary motions are very repeatable, with errors considerably less than seeing variation as the mirror was moved from NA2 to NA1 and back again, or the reverse. We saw the same pointing effect as before: we could line a star up on the boresight of Spicam, then switch to the echelle *without* moving the telescope (thanks to the tertiary being balanced for motion away from the zenith). Then we would use mirror tilts to get the star on the echelle slit, still without moving the telescope. Theoretically, the star was still on the boresight, and the boresight was now on the slit. But when we moved to other stars (and back to the first star), they would be consistently offset in one direction. We could not think of an obvious reason for this to happen, since the tracking was quite good and we did all we could to minimize the delay between boresighting the star on Spicam and centering it on the echelle slit. We did find that the change in mirror tilts got smaller each time we returned to spicam and recentered. After two more iterations, the offset was 5 arcseconds or less (although still systematically in one direction). We called this good enough and started taking some echelle spectra to compare image quality versus the position of the tertiary piston. 2nd half observing specialist: R. McMillan DIS was mounted after 01:30 so that Ed Turner and students could pursue a high-priority science program. The instrument behaved well, with excellent pointing and tracking even though we had not had time to check the instrument block. There was some trouble when I tried to start up the guider. Craig had been checking his new guider focus script earlier in the evening, and I was unsure what state it was in. The status showed the filter in place was 0, but I thought it had been left at 3. I tried to move the filter to 0 just to make sure, using the set gfilter = 0 command, and I got some alarming errors: 0 1 I CurrGCFilt; GCFilt=0, "none", 6000.0, 5000.0, 1.000, 0.00 0 0 ! Facil="SYSTEM"; VMSMsg="SUBRNG1"; EText="subscript 1 range error, PC=0005E720, PS=0000001B" %SYSTEM-F-SUBRNG1, subscript 1 range error, PC=0005E720, PS=0000001B %TRACE-F-TRACEBACK, symbolic stack dump follows Image Name Module Name Routine Name Line Number rel PC abs PC TCCINTERP CMD_SET CMD_SET 1183 00001020 0005E720 0 7FF21408 7FF21408 0 80021FC4 80021FC4 0 80021FC4 80021FC4 TCCINTERP 0 000E9714 000F9714 TCCINTERP CMD_DISPATCH CMD_DISPATCH 859 00000364 000506E4 TCCINTERP EXE_TCCINTERP EXE_TCCINTERP 173 00000174 00050174 0 81DFE8F0 81DFE8F0 $ 0 0 I TCCStatus="TTT","NNN"; TCCPos=-65.05,32.81,-322.18; AxePos=-65.05,32.81,-322.18 $ culminating in an appearance of the TCC system prompt, even though the TCC status messages continued to appeae. This may have had something to do with setting the filter to somewhere it thought it already was. Since we were already on the object and tracking, I didn't want to risk changing anything on the TCC, so I stopped using the window with the $ prompt. In a separate telrun window, I managed to start guiding, after some study of the new documentation. OBSERVER COMMENTS FOCUS LOG MAY 7 1999 Wind Time Inst Focus Az El #Temp Dir MPH filt FWHM " 02:00 slitcam +75(6760) 242 36 11.3/11.0 216 13 -- 1.48 #First temp is air, second temp is telescope. WEATHER MAY 7 1999 Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip. 16:01 60 12 11 283 (WNW) 540 ptly cldy none 17:01 59 15 8 298 (WNW) 559 ptly cldy none 18:01 61 15 10 245 (WSW) 530 ptly cldy none 19:01 55 10 9 271 (W) 628 ptly cldy none 20:01 52 8 9 259 (W) 654 ptly cldy none 21:01 51 7 10 222 (SW) 803 ptly cldy none 22:01 51 7 11 221 (SW) 867 cirrus none 23:01 53 9 12 243 (WSW) 858 cirrus none 00:01 52 8 15 214 (SW) 843 cirrus none 01:01 52 9 13 217 (SW) 859 mstly clr none 02:01 52 9 8 198 (SSW) 909 mstly clr none 03:01 52 8 14 232 (SW) 901 mstly clr none 04:01 50 8 13 257 (WSW) 1027 mstly clr none 05:01 50 8 11 242 (WSW) 971 mstly clr none 06:01 48 10 10 258 (WSW) 932 mstly clr 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. - Russet McMillan