From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20000418 Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 06:26:23 -0600 (MDT) TUESDAY APRIL 18, 2000 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Stubbs Stubbs, Wurtz, FTS, 4/17-18 21:15 05:33 Blais-Ouellette, S-H, Grandmont, Morris, Echelle Cook, Wishnow, Carr INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B UW07/S 20:32 05:33 - 0.7 - 0 - 8.3 0 0 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG Observing Specialist: McMillan In preparation for the night's observing, both positive and negative limits for cable safety were entered into the instrument block. Default settings for the secondary focus and the guider focus were also entered based on last night's measurements. The telescope was not opened at sunset due to high winds and dust. The wind finally dropped around 21:00, and the dome was opened around 21:15. The FTS was not quite ready at that time; while work was being done on the instrument, Chris Stubbs decided to do some experiments using the Shack-Hartmann to take fast images of Polaris, making image-motion measurements to be compared with DIMM. We got some impressive-looking movies of airflow across the telescope. At about 22:00, we switched back to the FTS, acquired a globular cluster, and focused. We established a slew procedure which would allow us to keep the instrument nearly level while still tracking the sky rotation; this was needed because of concerns about internal flexure in a portion of the instrument, not actual safety restrictions on the rotation. We did find that the rotator overshot its destination at least a little on every clockwise move, but the largest overshoot was less than 20 degrees. The light cirrus which had been prevalent during first half cleared progressively towards midnight. Aside from our first focus, we didn't obtain any good FWHM data from the guider, because it kept choosing to guide on galaxies instead of stars. FTS data taking continued without any significant problems. At one point there was some confusion about identification of a target, so we switched to the echelle and took a quick spectrum. Everything worked very smoothly during all the quick instrument changes, including the click-to-center interface for the echelle. OBSERVER COMMENTS FOCUS LOG APRIL 18 2000 Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El #Temp Dir MPH filt FWHM " 22:10 FTS -50(641) 86 54 10.3/12.5 268 16 -- 1.5? 22:20 Guider 1450 1.3 #First temp is air, second temp is telescope. WEATHER APRIL 18 2000 Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip. 17:01 63 18 29 268 (W) 1499 mstly clr none 18:01 60 17 31 252 (WSW) 8794 mstly clr none 19:01 58 16 30 256 (WSW) 2498 ptly cldy none 20:01 55 13 28 252 (WSW) 2564 ptly cldy none 21:01 53 12 24 262 (W) 1955 ptly cldy none 22:01 51 14 11 267 (W) 1779 lt cirrus none 23:01 49 16 16 269 (W) 1552 mstly clr none 00:01 48 13 16 271 (W) 1364 clear none 01:01 47 13 18 268 (W) 1498 clear none 02:01 46 13 18 266 (W) 1100 clear none 03:01 44 14 21 268 (W) 1261 clear none 04:01 43 15 18 268 (W) 1248 clear none 05:01 42 16 15 265 (W) 969 clear none 06:01 41 16 21 240 (WSW) 874 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 2.2.5. - Russet McMillan