From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20000217 Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 06:31:39 -0700 (MST) THURSDAY FEBRUARY 17, 2000 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Gillespie Morgan,Deglman SPIcam 2/17-18 18:44 05:50 McMillan Shack-Hartmann INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B EN01/S 18:44 05:50 - 2.0 - 0 - 9.1 0 - 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG (* means a trouble report has been issued or appended to) First-Half Observing Specialist: Deglman Delayed opening due to high winds. Opened at 18:05 under a cloudy sky. Closed at 18:55 due to high dust count and stayed closed due to clouds. Jeff Morgan performed M2 tests during this down time. Reopened at 20:40. Mounted pinhole into filter wheel #1. Second-Half Observing Specialist: McMillan Second half was mostly clear, with occasional high cirrus, and sometimes very bad seeing -- the telescope was generally getting much worse seeing than indicated by DIMM, for reasons unknown, as usual. Interestingly, when pointing models were being run, the seeing obtained by the guider and by DIMM moved in the same direction at the same time, but the guider was getting up to 1 arcsecond worse measurements than DIMM. However, the guider was never properly focused, because the seeing kept changing whenever I did a focus sweep; this could have been related. We input the new secondary tilt coefficients and did a quick-and-dirty 30 point model without doing a guider instrument block first, just so we could get an idea of how much difference the tilts made. It seemed like a good fit, so we applied it and went on to the S-H tests. With a couple of iterations, we found reasonable values for the tertiary tip/tilts to get a star onto the Shack-Hartmann camera. We kept the tertiary piston values from NA2, since we had no way of knowing how level the beam might be. I stored the tertiary tip/tilts for the S-H as follows: I copied the IP_TR2.DAT file to an IP_TR1.DAT files (since the name of the port is apparently TR1). I added a tertiary mirror control section by copying it from IP_NA2.DAT, and then input the values we had found. I renamed the instrument data file to be I_TR1_SH... instead of I_NA2_SH... This all appeared to work correctly, but if there are more files that need to be altered I hope someone will let me know. Because the seeing was horrible, we were unable to get a good altitude sweep with the Shack-Hartmann to fully confirm that the secondary tilt cooefficients were helping, but there was some indication that they were good (see note below). When we gave up on the S-H data, I took a guider instrument block and a full 72-point pointing model, which gave 3.5 arcseconds RMS. This model has been applied. OBSERVER COMMENTS J. Morgan (EN01): We were able to get a fair amount of data during the first half of the night on the effects of pistoning of M2 on image motion. Preliminary analysis indicates that it is NOT the cause of the image jumps that we have seen in the recent past. Thanks to Russet's efforts we were able to install the tilt coefficients for M2 support sag and take a preliminary pointing model with these coefficients in place. Tilts for the Shack-Hartmann sensor at the TR1 port were found and the SH sensor was used for the first time at this port. Attempts to take an altitude sweep with the SH sensor were made nearly useless by poor seeing. We were unable to take useful SH data below 50 degrees elevation. The data taken between 70 and 50 degrees which we were capable of analyzing was encouraging in that it showed decreased coma. Astigmatism remained as low as we observed after first pistoning M1 out a few weeks ago. Considering the weather...this was not a bad night. Thanks to both Frank and Russet for their valuable efforts to make this happen." FOCUS LOG FEBRUARY 17 2000 Wind Time Inst Focus Az El #Temp Dir MPH filt FWHM " #First temp is air, second temp is telescope. WEATHER FEBRUARY 17 2000 Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip. 16:01 47 11 31 252 (WSW) 6718 cloudy none 17:01 44 11 22 253 (WSW) 2231 cloudy none 18:01 39 12 23 267 (W) 1777 cloudy none 19:01 36 15 17 280 (W) 2387 cloudy none 20:01 36 15 22 294 (WNW) 1042 cloudy none 21:01 34 15 18 288 (WNW) 962 mstly clr none 22:01 33 15 22 260 (W) 681 cirrus none 23:01 32 15 23 288 (WNW) 710 clear none 00:01 29 13 19 317 (NW) 535 cirrus none 01:01 29 14 13 285 (WNW) 582 clear none 02:01 27 12 12 288 (WNW) 556 clear none 03:01 27 13 17 301 (WNW) 614 clear none 04:01 27 12 17 281 (W) 623 clear none 05:01 28 11 17 284 (WNW) 564 clear none 06:01 28 9 15 306 (NW) 515 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 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: 2.55b5. Current guide software version: GIm Ctrlv3.0b27. Current TCC version is 2.2.2. -Frank Deglman, Russet McMillan