From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20000613 Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 05:50:05 -0600 (MDT) TUESDAY JUNE 13 2000 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY OBSERVING LOG ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH Gillespie McMillan SPIcam, S-H 6/13-14 20:00 05:10 Echelle, Guider INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B EN01/S 21:16 04:51 0 0 0 0 0.3 7.2 0 - 0 (note: times listed include instrument change time) ACTIVITY LOG (* means a trouble report has been issued or appended to) Observing Specialist: McMillan The night was clear, with variable seeing -- the numbers were always good to moderate when SPIcam was being focused, but for at least an hour while the Shack-Hartmann was in use the seeing was considerably worse. * The guider portion of the guider monitor is temporarily broken due to the changes in messaging and logging for the new TCC version. Short summary: I completed a collimation check, an altitude sweep with the Shack-Hartmann (with fans on, and a faster sweep with them off), a check of the tertiary tip/tilts at NA1, and a 112-point pointing model. Gory details follow. Just before startup, Craig discovered a problem with the new tertiary galil code that wouldn't allow it to rotate all the way to NA2. He reset the range and got it working properly. It was fortunate that this was fixed, since the tertiary got a great deal of exercise tonight. I started with SPIcam to let the dome cool and darken fully before starting the Shack-Hartmann measurements. At an intermediate altitude, I did a quick collimation check by defocusing SPIcam on a bright star. The image (stest0614.0003.fits) was reasonably symmetrical, but there was an anomalous bright zone. I decided not to try adjusting the secondary tilts. Next I switched to the Shack-Hartmann and caught some images of a bright star near the zenith. With the help of Jeff Morgan on the phone, I did a quick analysis of the data and confirmed that the collimation was reasonable. I did an altitude sweep going downward with the fans on, and noticed that the seeing got considerably worse when I reached ~40 degrees, but I thought it might just be the airmass. When I was done, I went back up to the zenith, and the seeing still looked poor. I did one star (near the zenith) with the telex fans turned off, but I guessed that it wasn't worth doing more since the seeing was so bad. John Briggs later came in and confirmed that there had also been a sudden degradation of seeing with DIMM2, which was set up near the 2.5m. I returned to SPIcam and started doing some tests on repeatability of pointing in preparation for checking the NA1 tip/tilts. While I was experimenting, I saw the seeing getting dramatically better again, so I went back to the Shack-Hartmann and got three stars at different altitudes with the fans off, then turned the fans back on and got one more at low altitude, since the previous data had been poor. Then I went back to working with the pointing on SPIcam. I slewed to a bright star and used calibration offsets to get it as close as I could to the boresight. Due to the TCC's new habit of halting axes when switching from NA2 to a non-rotating instrument, I also experimented with re-slewing to the same star and confirming it came up at the same place. Once I was satisfied with the pointing, I switch to the echelle and found that the star came up very near the slit. I confirmed this by switching back and forth again, and got the same result. This is not very consistent with the behavior we've seen over the last few weeks, when even local pointing corrections were not working very well, but I concluded there was nothing I could do to improve the tilts using this method. It's possible some of our observers have been using less accurate coordinates, or perhaps the tertiary had needed homing before (I checked that it was homed this afternoon), or perhaps the pointing was simply off and it was more obvious with the echelle because of the slitviewer's small field of view. Before starting a pointing model, I thought I would take advantage of the good seeing to check for focus offsets between filters with SPIcam. I wanted to check the MSSSO filters in particular, but I started with the SDSS set since they were already loaded. I found that the focus results were inconsistent even within a single focus frame, indicating variable seeing on timescales of 10-40 seconds, so I abandoned that project and went on to a large pointing model. The data taking went very smoothly, with the SlewPause parameter in DoPterr working perfectly. I never had to retry a single star. There was one misidentification of a double star, however, which took me a while to track down after the fact. Once that was eliminated from the data, the fit was around 4 arcseconds RMS. Did we know that the DoPterr output is now going to the correct directory? I missed that and spent a little time hunting around before I looked in the obvious place. I applied the new pointing model and finished up by doing a quick check of pointing with the echelle, which was quite good and showed no systematic offset. The new TCC version gave me no problems during the night, and the changes to the interface were nearly invisible as we normally use it for this telescope. * There was only one strange error message where a slew commanded from the MC returned a failure message when in fact the TCC was tracking happily, and that may not have been a TCC fault at all. OBSERVER COMMENTS FOCUS LOG Time Instrument Focus Az El #Temp Dir MPH filt FWHM " 21:20 SPIcam -100(784) -12 58 18.6/19.4 246 14 r' 1.06 21:25 Guider -3000(784) -12 58 18.6/19.4 246 14 r' 1.18 21:45 S-H 50(1520) -24 85 18.4/18.8 247 13 -- ?? 22:40 S-H 150(1603) -67 76 18.2/18.2 260 16 -- ?? 00:20 SPIcam 50(833) -78 75 18.5/17.7 287 13 r' 1.06 02:00 Echelle 185(190) -74 53 17.2/17.5 356 16 clear 0.92 #First temp is air, second temp is telescope. WEATHER Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Precip. 17:01 73 36 14 265 (W) 1033 clear none 18:01 73 38 15 233 (SW) 1246 clear none 19:01 68 36 10 285 (WNW) 1366 clear none 20:01 67 34 6 255 (WSW) 1427 clear none 21:01 66 29 11 221 (SW) 1183 clear none 22:01 65 22 14 264 (W) 928 clear none 23:01 65 22 13 266 (W) 1016 clear none 00:01 65 19 7 270 (W) 963 clear none 01:01 65 21 12 309 (NW) 1080 clear none 02:01 63 21 8 0 (N) 1062 clear none 03:01 63 23 8 9 (N) 921 clear none 04:01 60 22 0 277 (W) 1017 clear none 05:01 53 30 19 70 (ENE) 933 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: 2.3.1. Current MC version: 1.7.2. - Russet McMillan