From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20000801 Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2000 05:32:07 -0600 (MDT) APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5m Telescope Night Log Tuesday, Aug 1st, 2000 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- E.Turner C.Hastings SPIcam 8/01 20:43 21:00 B.Gillespie C.Hastings Shack-Hart 8/01 21:00 21:40 D.York C.Mallouris Echelle 8/01 21:53 01:10 S.Anderson S.Anderson DIS-low 8/02 01:10 05:19 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RS/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- PU05/S 21:00 21:00 0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0 0 EN01/R/D 21:00 21:41 0 0 0 0 0.1 0.6 0 0 0 UC07/R 21:42 01:10 0 - 0 - 3.5 - - 0 - UW04/R 01:10 05:19 0 - 0.3 - 3.8 - - 0 - note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist, 1st Half: Noel Camron Hastings During this afternoon I updated the 'default.dat' file with the new mirror tilt values that Jeff Morgan sent. Later, Peter Doherty logged in to take SPIcam bias frames in hopes of coming up with some ideas regarding the noise. His findings have been sent to 'techstaff'. During afternoon checkout I found DIMM to be in a power off mode, parked, and the laptop crashed. I tried to restart but found two problems that I did not have time to look in to. Later in the evening, John Briggs showed up and worked on it until it started to run again. The time on the telescope was wrong and needed to be reset. Another odd problem is that when DIMM started a new folder for tonight's data, it named it 7/01-02 instead of 8/01-02. This was forwarded to Armin for analysis. I opened the dome at 19:50 to cool. After I completed a series of flats and bias frames for PU05, I noticed that the lens object is not quite up yet. Another 3-4 days and it will be. I decided to take Shack-Hartmann data with Jeff Morgan's new mirror tilt values in place instead of PU05. I managed 8 frames before switch time to UC07. The seeing was somewhat poor, with it getting, at best, around 1.1 arcsecs and at worst, 1.8 arcsecs. When finished with S-H I could not get the CCD to disconnect. It remained on all night. We switched over to echelle with no trouble. Pointing was good and may be improved slightly with a new model, but it is quite close. Focus images looked very round and tracking appears to be working well. No further info, all ran smooth. I did give a group of German tourists from the air base a quick tour in an extra 10 minutes. Observing Specialist, 2nd Half: Russet McMillan Second half was clear with variable seeing. While the telescope was pointed north, the guider FWHM measurements moved in parallel with DIMM, though slightly better; in other parts of the sky, they seemed barely correlated. The remainder of the echelle time went very smoothly, and the tracking was excellent. While DIS was in use, a slight degradation of the pointing accuracy was apparent compared to first half last night, but in some ways this was a benefit, since targets were not always appearing under the slit. Several bright targets tonight offered the opportunity to check the instrument focus under the assumption that it's higher than the slitviewer focus, and the spectral width was in reasonable agreement with the seeing. Some windshake was apparent when we were pointed directly away from a 15 MPH wind, but the guider was able to compensate. * We lost a little over ten minutes when the rotator cable got caught and started to bind, but once it was freed everything seemed fine until a small slew produced a 120 degree clockwise runaway at 04:35. Since the shutdown, we've seen a few small overshoots in the clockwise direction, but this was the first large runaway. Remark 2.62, which is still in testing, does not show a countdown for slews and rotations requested by a remote observer (running Remark 2.55b5), or from the MC or TCC. I forgot to test whether it shows a countdown for its own slew requests. ****** OBSERVER COMMENTS ****** --------------- INSTRUMENT FOCUS LOG ----------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM" --------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:03 Echelle 0000(263) 200 74 15.2/16.2 133 17 ND1 0.92" 01:35 DISslit -100(1054) -19 53 13.9/14.1 153 16 -- 0.99 04:15 DISslit 0(1122) 151 55 14.4/13.6 216 9 -- 1.40 #First temp is air, second temp is telescope structure. ------------- WEATHER CONDITIONS ------------ Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 18:01 66 43 1 194 (SSW) 453 mstly clr none 19:01 66 43 8 226 (SW) 450 mstly clr none 20:01 63 42 5 265 (W) 428 mstly clr none 21:01 62 36 2 77 (ENE) 404 mstly clr none 22:01 59 34 18 124 (SE) 358 mstly clr none 23:01 59 33 19 126 (SE) 446 clear none 00:01 59 36 18 138 (SE) 459 clear none 01:01 58 37 17 137 (SE) 564 clear none 02:01 57 37 11 137 (SE) 584 clear none 03:01 56 37 6 180 (S) 597 clear none 04:01 58 36 5 220 (SW) 535 clear none 05:01 57 37 9 215 (SW) 527 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: 2.62 or 2.55b5. Current guide software version: GIm Ctrlv3.0b27. Current TCC version is 2.4.0b1 Current MC version: v1_7_3. - Camron Hastings, Russet McMillan