Date: Sun, 9 May 1999 07:05:14 -0600 (MDT) From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 990508 SATURDAY MAY 8, 1999 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Margon Deutsch,Anderson DIS 5/8-9 21:23 01:10 Kent Newberg, Yanny DIS 5/9 01:10 04:36 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B UW04/R 21:23 01:10 0 - 0.2 - 3.6 - 0 0 - UC08/R 01:10 04:36 0 0 0.2 0 1.1 2.2 0 - 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG (* means a trouble report has been issued or appended to) 2nd half observing specialist: R. McMillan The telescope was opened around 18:30 for cooling. There was a slight delay in getting started due to some work on the tertiary during the afternoon, but by twilight we were on the sky. The weather was excellent during first half, with seeing reaching 1 arcsecond around midnight. During second half, the seeing increased and a few clouds appeared near twilight. There were a couple of tracking anomalies early in the evening, including a jump of 5 arcseconds. I checked the clamps on the tertiary, did a pointing correction, and couldn't find anything that would cause a problem. The performance improved noticeably during the night, so perhaps it was a thermal effect. The new guiding software was a little confusing. About half the time, the "guide on" command would not work, returning a message about no guide probes being defined. This could be avoided by using the "guide on /defgstars" option, but I couldn't see any pattern about the times when it complained and the times when it didn't. There was another appearance of the stack dump error seen last night. Once again it occurred upon moving the gfilter to 0, but this time it was definitely not at 0 when it started. When I tried setting the guider filter to one of the other "empty" filters, it claimed that positions 2 and 4 didn't exist. Craig advised using talk tcc_gmech to set the guider filter until this problem is tracked down. The stack dump did not appear to cause any other problems with telrun, so I just reconnected. I borrowed a little time at the observer change to make a requested test of tertiary motion using the new numbers Jeff Morgan had calculated; this went well. The time is listed as equipment trouble, although actually the tertiary was fine. OBSERVER COMMENTS The weather was good. The telescope was working well (pointing to a few arc seconds). FOCUS LOG MAY 8 1999 Wind Time Inst Focus Az El #Temp Dir MPH filt FWHM " 23:00 slitcam 100(6790) 151 54 13.3/12.8 246 16 -- 1.2 04:15 slitcam 80(6725) 237 39 10.0/10.3 289 21 -- 1.4 #First temp is air, second temp is telescope. WEATHER MAY 8 1999 Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip. 16:01 62 18 25 254 (WSW) 1197 clear none 17:01 65 20 17 218 (SW) 1131 clear none 18:01 65 20 22 269 (W) 1194 clear none 19:01 61 16 13 211 (SSW) 1361 clear none 20:01 56 11 18 240 (WSW) 1461 clear none 21:01 55 9 16 229 (SW) 1573 clear none 22:01 55 11 13 246 (WSW) 1498 clear none 23:01 56 11 12 247 (WSW) 1490 clear none 00:01 56 11 17 256 (WSW) 1475 clear none 01:01 54 10 17 259 (W) 1481 clear none 02:01 52 8 10 256 (WSW) 1769 clear none 03:01 52 8 13 279 (W) 1638 clear none 04:01 51 7 10 276 (W) 1908 cirrus none 05:01 49 6 13 285 (WNW) 1941 cirrus none 06:01 49 6 9 272 (W) 1903 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. - Russet McMillan