From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20000222 Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 06:27:22 -0700 (MST) TUESDAY FEBRUARY 22, 2000 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Gonzalez Gonzalez SPIcam 2/22 18:48 23:58 Davidsen Tsvetanov DIS 2/23 00:23 05:45 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B UW13/R 18:48 00:10 1.7 0.7 0 0 0.8 2.2 0 0 0 JH01/R 00:10 05:45 - 0 - 0 - 5.6 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 Opened late at 18:15 to a partially cloudy sky. There was some snow on the roof. It was a heavier gropple, so the decision was made to open. If any should blow in, it should not melt because of the low temperature and can be CO2 cleaned in the morning. Flat fielding was done for UW13. Closed at 19:35 due to clouds. Dome flats (off the mirror covers) were taken during this time. Second-Half Observing Specialist: McMillan The telescope was opened at 22:00 as the clouds cleared off. Second half was clear, with poor seeing while the guider was in use, and indications of poor seeing on the slitviewer afterward. Winds were moderately high, with one gust exceeding the limit, but since this did not appear to be part of a trend we remained open. * The guider shutter stuck halfway open to the point of being unusable around 01:30; this problem has been seen before, and may be related to the cold, since it was not repeatable during the day. When the telescope warmed slightly towards dawn, the shutter sticking became more intermittent. We lost some DIS data due to a combination of observer and observing specialist error. The red chip had been saturated before observing started, and in the middle of a discussion about taking biases to clear the charge, the observer missed my instruction to set the grating wavelengths after homing. This meant that an hour and a half of data was taken with useless wavelength centers -- however, this had a fortunate result; the observer's comment that the images looked odd reminded me that I had forgotten to hook up the nitrogen when I mounted the instrument, so that I was able to catch it before the cameras warmed. Pointing with DIS was extremely consistent, with stars coming up within just a few arcseconds every time (admittedly, these were short slews). There were some indications of image motion in the "bi-stability" mode described by Jeff Brown, but it was hard to disentangle the interaction of offsets with unexpected motion. Sometimes it seemed that making a small offset would actually trigger a larger jump in an unexpected direction. The moderately strong (NW) winds and variable seeing also played a part in making the motions difficult to judge. The direction of the larger jumps I saw were mostly vertical (NNE to SSW) with the telescope on the equator a few hours east of the meridian, and a little closer to horizontal (ENE to WSW) with the telescope on the equator west of the meridian. If the PMSS is involved, I believe the direction of those jumps implicates either B or C sector. OBSERVER COMMENTS FOCUS LOG FEBRUARY 22 2000 Wind Time Inst Focus Az El #Temp Dir MPH filt FWHM " 22:10 SPIcam -75(-95) -144 43 -3.2/-2.8 329 20 Halpha 1.6 22:15 guider -3900 23:05 Spicam 50(89) -141 46 -3.6/-3.8 322 15 Halpha 2.1 00:20 DISslit 120(75) 88 65 -3/4/-4.1 347 16 none 1.4 00:25 guider 2850 #First temp is air, second temp is telescope. WEATHER FEBRUARY 22 2000 Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip. 17:01 30 23 15 273 (W) 252 cloudy none 18:01 30 21 18 273 (W) 289 cloudy none 19:01 30 19 17 300 (WNW) 322 ptly cldy none 20:01 28 17 14 323 (NW) 230 cloudy none 21:01 27 16 18 317 (NW) 185 cloudy none 22:01 26 16 13 332 (NNW) 175 ptly cldy none 23:01 26 17 18 302 (WNW) 173 clear none 00:01 26 18 15 11 (N) 181 clear none 01:01 26 18 13 355 (N) 156 clear none 02:01 26 18 15 4 (N) 176 clear none 03:01 26 14 19 23 (NNE) 148 clear none 04:01 30 -1 19 355 (N) 85 clear none 05:01 31 -7 4 331 (NNW) 92 clear none 06:01 30 -1 21 356 (N) 74 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