From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20000811 Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 06:05:00 -0600 (MDT) APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5m Telescope Night Log Friday, Aug 11th, 2000 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT DATE START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- T.Harrison T.Harrison DIS-H 1"Qz 8/11 19:52 00:59 D.York D.York Echelle 8/12 01:26 05:40 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- NM05/R 20:49 01:10 - 2.2 - 0 - 2.1 0 - 0 UC03/R 01:10 05:27 0 0 0 0.1 1.4 2.8 0 - 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist, 1st Shift: Camron Hastings Clouds and rain delayed opening until 20:30 MDT. The cloud scanner was inoperative and Craig Loomis found some software glitches which he repaired to get the cloud scanner running again. We need to make sure that at the end of the night we issue a 'scanstop'. SPIcam was started warming today and this evening appeared nearly warm. I closed the dome again at 21:15 due to puffy, fast moving clouds and a little rain. It cleared again around 23:30 MDT and I opened to clear skies. Observing Specialist, 2nd Shift: Russet McMillan The sky steadily improved after midnight until we had lovely clear weather for a few hours. Some clouds did reappear near morning twilight, but never thick enough to cause significant interference with observing. The seeing was also excellent, with DIS, the NA2 guider, and the echelle all reporting better than 0.8 arcsec for several hours. Pointing was very consistent with all instruments used tonight. I made use of the time scheduled for changing from DIS to Echelle to capture some Shack-Hartmann data instead. The collimation looked reasonable in defocused images. The data-taking was somewhat complicated by the good seeing, which caused stars in our usual brightness range to saturate. Despite the difficulties, the Shack-Hartmann use ran only a few minutes past the time allotted for changing instruments. There was one instance of gross image motion while the echelle was in use, visible on the slitviewer image gimg0094, timestamped UT 07:57:52. This 4-second exposure was taken just after the observer requested a 3-arcsecond horizontal move, but the image shows a 5-arcsecond smear in a mostly vertical direction. I got the primary load cell display up just a little too late to look for any sudden motion there, but the recording may have caught something. There were no wind gusts above ~15 mph at the time, and we were pointed obliquely away from the wind. It's possible the secondary may have moved badly when the offsets triggered an update; there was a reversal of secondary motion at around that time. There was also one communications interruption, apparently due to a net slowdown, at around 03:27. It corrected itself in a few minutes with minimal intervention. Difficulties associated with reconnecting in the middle of an exposure cost about 7 minutes of usable time. ****** OBSERVER COMMENTS ****** - NONE - --------------- INSTRUMENT FOCUS LOG ---------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El #Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM" --------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:55 DIS Slit 160(1442) 096 54 16.2/17.3 165 06 none 1.27" 21:00 NA2 Gdr 699 097 55 16.3/17.3 176 06 none 1.56" 01:10 S-H 275(2032) 262 63 15.3/15.5 140 14 -- ?? 01:35 Echelle 171(422) 320 73 15.1/15.3 147 14 ND2 0.77 02:30 Echelle 86(336) 307 65 15.2/14.9 149 13 ND2 0.82 ------------- WEATHER CONDITIONS ------------ Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 63 50 1 165 (SSE) 1683 cloudy none 17:01 64 50 4 257 (WSW) 1664 cloudy none 18:01 65 52 7 81 (E) 1655 cloudy none 19:01 61 50 7 173 (S) 1727 cloudy none 20:01 61 50 0 16 (NNE) 1786 ptly cldy none 21:01 61 48 6 180 (S) 1802 cloudy none 22:01 62 47 4 157 (SSE) 1757 cloudy none 23:01 60 47 8 109 (ESE) 1738 ptly cldy none 00:01 60 47 12 126 (SE) 1907 clear none 01:01 60 45 13 144 (SE) 1949 clear none 02:01 59 42 13 153 (SSE) 1489 clear none 03:01 59 42 4 155 (SSE) 1487 ptly cldy none 04:01 58 40 9 133 (SE) 1293 ptly cldy none 05:01 58 38 14 137 (SE) 929 ptly cldy none 06:01 59 38 15 148 (SSE) 1044 ptly 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: 2.62. Current guide software version: GIm Ctrlv3.0b27. Current TCC version is 2.4.0b1 Current MC version: v1_7_3. -- Camron Hastings, Russet McMillan