From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20000324 Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 04:46:07 -0700 (MST) FRIDAY MARCH 24, 2000 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Anderson Anderson DIS 3/24 19:30 00:08 Gonzalez Gonzalez Echelle 3/25 00:12 04:00 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B UW03/R 19:12 00:10 0 0 0 0.3 3.6 1.1 0 0 0 UW12/R 00:10 05:06 - 2.6 - 0 - 2.3 0 0 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG Observing Specialist: McMillan First half was occasionally cirrusy, with seeing that ranged from moderate to excellent. Second half had increasing clouds. The telescope was closed at 04:00, but no useful data was obtained after 02:30. During afternoon checkout, we had a communications problem with the NA2 guider. This was solved by restarting the TCC and Hub softare; the reason for the problem was unknown. On the other hand, the Shack-Hartmann problem noted last night was apparently *not* a communications problem, despite the error message that appears on the PC. When commanded to move from Reference mode to Mirror mode, the S-H does *something*, but it doesn't do the right thing (and it also displays a misleading error message about communications). This will need to be resolved before the next engineering night. We opened at 19:30 after the observer finished taking cals. During initial focusing, unfocused images looked extremely comatic. Nevertheless, both DIS and the guider were getting good seeing, with images sometimes less than 0.8 arcseconds at times when DIMM was reporting 1.5 to 2 arcseconds. * Some strange trailed star images with the guider appeared to be caused by the shutter being open either during readout or clearing. It's unclear whether this is a mechanical sticking problem or a software timing difficulty. Since the trails were much fainter than the star images, it didn't hamper the centroiding necessary for guiding. * The DIS users reported that their spectra were somewhat spread out along the slit, despite the fact that the focus appeared good on the slitviewer and the guiding was excellent. About fifteen minutes worth of experiments indicated that it was probably caused by the slitviewer being out of focus relative to the instrument, but we didn't take the time to do a full set of tests that would rule out everything else. OBSERVER COMMENTS FOCUS LOG MARCH 24 2000 Wind Time Inst Focus Az El #Temp Dir MPH filt FWHM " 19:40 DISslit 0(478) 220 51 5.2/6.8 248 7 -- 1.04 19:45 guider -640 21:25 DISslit 100(572) 130 43 4.1/4.8 190 8 -- 1.12 21:30 guider 687 23:00 DISslit 175(463) 106 69 5.1/4.2 249 3 -- 1.18 00:25 Echelle 150(-459) 178 77 4.7/4.3 223 9 clear 0.68 #First temp is air, second temp is telescope. WEATHER MARCH 24 2000 Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip. 17:01 45 6 0 303 (WNW) 519 cirrus none 18:01 43 10 4 268 (W) 584 cirrus none 19:01 42 4 7 272 (W) 590 cirrus none 20:01 41 14 5 208 (SSW) 791 mstly clr none 21:01 41 15 6 190 (S) 952 mstly clr none 22:01 39 14 8 178 (S) 895 cirrus none 23:01 41 2 1 248 (WSW) 699 mstly clr none 00:01 41 7 6 268 (W) 751 cirrus none 01:01 41 12 1 226 (SW) 887 ptly cldy none 02:01 42 -3 4 269 (W) 555 mstly cldy none 03:01 43 -3 6 260 (W) 554 mstly cldy none 04:01 44 -4 8 274 (W) 473 mstly cldy 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