From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20010121 Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 06:25:30 -0700 (MST) APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5m Telescope Night Log Sunday, January 21st, 2001 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- A.Nitta A.Nitta,J.Hayes, DIS-med 17:10 00:11 B.Maclean S.Anderson S.Anderson DIS-low 00:12 06:30 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- NM07/O 18:22 00:10 0 0 1.0 0 4.8 0 0 0 0 UW04/R 00:10 06:07 0 0 0.4 0 5.2 0.4 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist, 1st Shift: Noel Camron Hastings Tonight I replaced and double checked the multi-slit wheel for DIS. It appears to be functioning correctly, so I am not sure what the trouble was the other night. I made some minor modifications and retested it and cannot find any problems so it is back in service on DIS. Three slits are now available real-time for observing. Jon Davis came in to check out the deteriorating motor noises. He felt that the noise was not getting much worse, but that the second motor is now starting to exhibit the same noise as the first. He OK'd us to run tonight as long as it did not get worse. I recalibrated the DIS gratings and we opened the dome at 18:00 MST to begin cooling and to take some sky flats with DIS. At the beginning of the night I noticed that the rotator was lagging behind in the counterclockwise direction again. In addition, the telescope became lost and it was determined that there were large magna-sensor errors in the altitude axis. Craig Loomis noticed that the error was nearly identical for three non-consecutive sensors, about 11'. Jon Davis also thought it odd and decided to look at it Monday morning along with the enclosure motors. After we found our position in the sky again, I noted that the slewfudge time of 5 secs is ignored for pointing corrections, or seems to be. Immediately after a pointing correction the guider exposes, resulting in a trailed FK5 star. I worked around this using permutations of the track/pterr command (noobj 1st, nofind 2nd). Email will be sent to Russ Owen about this. After all this, things ran well..... Observing Specialist, 2nd Shift: Russet McMillan Second half had widespread thin cirrus. Seeing was quite variable as the clouds passed by, ranging from 0.9-1.8 arcsec on the guider. I noticed a very strong focus gradient across the slitviewer with the new slit wheel mounted. It didn't seem to be a serious problem for science, since the spectra looked reasonably well focused, but it did make it very difficult to focus the telescope when temperatures started jumping around. After the program switch, I struggled for a while trying to get a good focus and then persuaded the observer to let me move the slit back to the old wheel. This took a little over 20 minutes (~10 to decide to switch, 10 to make the switch), and after that things went more smoothly. --------------- INSTRUMENT FOCUS LOG ---------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM" --------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:20 DIS Slit -050(464) 231 50 -1.9/-1.1 383 05 none 1.17" 19:24 NA2 Gdr 1200(465) 232 50 -2.0/-1.1 357 03 none 1.70" 21:44 DIS Slit +020(463) 224 54 -1.6/-2.2 315 09 none 1.12" 21:47 NA2 Gdr -3522(464) 225 53 -1.6/-2.3 323 10 none 1.21" 00:20 DISslit 50(594) 59 62 1.6/-0.9 8 7 - 2.26 00:51 DISslit 130(677) 56 67 1.3/-0.5 358 2 - 1.27 00:59 NA2gdr 0(56000) 54 69 1.1/-0.5 8 8 none 1.21 03:03 DISslit 50(674) 153 51 1.4/0.4 279 2 - 1.31 ------------- WEATHER CONDITIONS ------------ Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 29 9 5 223 (SW) 274 clear none 17:01 29 9 0 82 (E) 406 clear none 18:01 30 3 3 286 (WNW) 239 clear none 19:01 29 -6 1 339 (NNW) 102 clear none 20:01 27 0 5 351 (N) 116 clear none 21:01 29 -11 6 349 (NNW) 61 clear none 22:01 30 -11 6 326 (NW) 52 clear none 23:01 32 -22 6 1 (N) 47 cirrus none 00:01 33 -21 8 22 (NNE) 185 mstly clr none 01:01 36 -11 8 2 (N) 120 cirrus none 02:01 36 -10 6 3 (N) 115 cirrus none 03:01 35 -10 2 353 (N) 63 cirrus none 04:01 36 -11 6 354 (N) 48 cirrus none 05:01 35 -10 5 352 (N) 64 cirrus none 06:01 35 -7 4 305 (NW) 60 cirrus 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 > 1u per 0.1 cubic feet. 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 2.4.1 Current MC version: v1_7_3. - Noel Camron Hastings, Russet McMillan