Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 06:12:12 -0700 (MST)
From: Frank Deglman
Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20000312
                           SUNDAY MARCH 12, 2000
                         APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY
                              OBSERVING  LOG
                                                          ACTUAL
ASTRONOMER      OBSERVER(S)        INSTRUMENT   DATE   START FINISH
Krisciunas      Krisciunas         SPIcam       3/12   19:03  19:53
Anderson     Anderson, Williams    DIS        3/12-13  20:13  06:07
 INST        SCHEDULED     WEATH     EQUIP      OBS    DAY   NOTUSED
I/RS/DN    START FINISH   D    B    D    B    D    B   USE   D    B
UW07/R     19:03  20:03   -    0    -    0    -   1.0   0    -    0
UW03/R     20:03  05:22   0    0    0    0   4.3  5.0   0    0    0
(note: times listed include instrument change time)
                              ACTIVITY LOG
First Half Observing Specialist: McMillan
First half was cirrusy, with excellent seeing.  At times the guider
was undersampled.  As arranged by an instrument swap and a time swap,
Kevin Krisciunas observed with SPIcam instead of GRIM as originally
scheduled, and Scott Anderson took the time that had been scheduled
for JH05 (which will be made up March 25).
We had a little trouble with the cloud camera getting its mirrors
misaligned and repeatedly stalling, but everything we saw was
eventually traced to operator error.  * We also saw some strange
behavior with the dome light controls in the TCC -- sometimes a status
check would report an incorrect state for the lights, which led to
lights not turning off when commanded.  This may have been the cause
of the dome lights remaining on a week or so ago and ruining a set of
twilight flats.  * In related news, the lamp controller for the cal
lamps on the top end of the telescope has been flaky for a few weeks,
and tonight for the first time it failed when it was needed.  The
observers delayed their cals a little until the controller was in a
better mood.  A replacement controller is on order.
Since Eddie Bergeron has mentioned the possibility of sinusoidal
motions in the guiding offsets, I took the opportunity of excellent
seeing and a bright guide star to capture GIFs of the guider monitor
with several different guider exposure times.  I couldn't really see
any patterns that were very convincing -- when I saw something in X,
there was nothing with a similar timescale in Y, and so forth.  It
might be worth trying a power spectral analysis, but I don't
particularly see anything by eye.  The GIFs are available on the web
at http://users.apo.nmsu.edu/~mcmillan/guider1.gif
and its siblings guider2.gif, guider3.gif, and guider4.gif.
Second Half Observing Specialist: Deglman
Had cirrus cloud cover the entire second half.  Experienced problems with
DIS's SBIG ST-6 slitviewer camera displaying 60 second exposures.  The
thermoelectric cooler got turned off.  This caused excessively high
thermal counts (and noise) thus making the "auto display" routine
ineffective.  Reset to -40 degrees.  Cirrus was a problem in many of the
earlier DIS spectra attempts, but got better later.  Closed dome at 05:40.
Calibration spectra were obtained afterwards.
                            OBSERVER COMMENTS
Ben Williams (UW03)
Telescope worked very well.  It was a successful night despite moderate
cloud cover.
                                FOCUS LOG
                              MARCH 12 2000
                                                  Wind
Time   Inst        Focus     Az  El   #Temp    Dir  MPH  filt  FWHM "
19:00  SPIcam   -100(288)   152  53  5.8/6.7   248    8   V    0.98
19:10  guider     950
20:25  DISslit    80(493)   155  53  6.1/5.8   237    9        0.80
20:30  guider    -1400
02:30  DISslit    50(429)   180  57  5.4/5.2   183    6  none  1.1
#First temp is air, second temp is telescope.
                                 WEATHER
                              MARCH 12 2000
                               Wind
     Time   Temp F Dewp F  MPH   Direction    Dust      Sky      Precip.
     17:01    50     5      6   276  (W)      699      cirrus     none
     18:01    43     1      4   260  (W)      773      cirrus     none
     19:01    42     5      9   226  (SW)    1386      cirrus     none
     20:01    43     5      7   252  (WSW)   1524      cirrus     none
     21:01    43     4      9   236  (SW)    1434      cirrus     none
     22:01    44     2      9   232  (SW)    1327      cirrus     none
     23:01    43     2      7   197  (SSW)   1522      cirrus     none
     00:01    43     0      7   196  (SSW)   1038      cirrus     none
     01:01    41     0      9   197  (SSW)   1090      cirrus     none
     02:01    42     1      8   182  (S)     1397      cirrus     none
     03:01    43     2      8   215  (SW)    1138      cirrus     none
     04:01    42     1      9   242  (WSW)    609      cirrus     none
     05:01    41     2     10   231  (SW)     614      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: 2.55b5.
Current guide software version: GIm Ctrlv3.0b27.  Current TCC version
is 2.2.2.
- Russet McMillan, Frank Deglman