From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20010131 Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 06:31:01 -0700 (MST) APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, January 31st, 2001 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- J.Frieman G.Richards,D.Johnston DIS-Low 19:10 22:30 D.Bowen D.Bowen, R.Kim DIS-High 01:10 06:10 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- UC03/R 18:31 00:10 0 2.4 0 0 0 3.3 0 0 0 PU03/R 00:10 06:03 1.0 0 0 0 4.9 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist, 1st Shift: Noel Camron Hastings Today during checkout the primary mirror was found to be frosted over. There are reasonably large ice crystals on it. We are not sure how it happened since it was completely closed up all day. There was a high humidity event during the day, but it should not have affected it since we were closed and the dome heaters were on keeping the dome about 5 degrees warmer than ambient. Mark and Jon tried to CO2 clean it with no effect, and we tried using radiant heaters to remove what we could before handing it over for science tonight. The DIS slit wheel problem was diagnosed as found to not be a hardware problem. It was a problem with the wheel position when mounted and was fixed today during checkout. The humidity dropped and we were able to open at 18:55 MST. The mirror covers, which had warmed separately earlier and then closed, seemed to help the frost a lot. It was 80% gone when I opened at this time. The humidity bounced near closing most of the rest of first half, but we were able to remain open until 22:30 MST, when the humidity rose beyond limits. Observing Specialist, 2nd Shift: Russet McMillan After a few hours, the humidity dropped rapidly and we were able to re-open just after 01:00. The sky was mostly clear with some cirrus, and seeing was generally poor (1.2-2.2 arcsec, worse at high airmass). The observers at Princeton had considerable trouble with their Mac and with their network connections on both Mac and Unix machines; apparently the difficulty was at their end, since there was no trouble here. We had to work around it with a combination of observing-specialist guiding and some outright service observing when the connections failed completely. --------------- INSTRUMENT FOCUS LOG ---------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM" --------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:15 DIS Slit -50(325) 157 67 -7.3/-2.9 184 7 none 1.64 19:22 NA2 Gdr -900(324) 161 67 -7.5/-3.0 182 4 none 1.18 01:21 DISslit -30(186) 166 58 -6.2/-8.4 314 5 - 1.65 03:07 DISslit 30(265) 214 54 -7.1/-8.3 354 9 - 1.35 ------------- WEATHER CONDITIONS ------------ Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 23 19 5 187 (S) 281 cloudy none 17:01 22 18 5 196 (SSW) 331 cloudy none 18:01 19 16 5 176 (S) 353 cloudy none 19:01 20 9 4 180 (S) 457 ptly cldy none 20:01 19 13 4 184 (S) 664 ptly cldy none 21:01 18 11 8 190 (S) 715 ptly cldy none 22:01 19 15 7 216 (SW) 800 mstly clr none 23:01 17 15 7 218 (SW) 794 mstly clr none 00:01 17 13 3 264 (W) 752 mstly clr none 01:01 20 7 1 263 (W) 713 mstly clr none 02:01 20 1 8 349 (NNW) 638 mstly clr none 03:01 20 0 8 354 (N) 199 mstly clr none 04:01 19 2 8 346 (NNW) 211 mstly clr none 05:01 20 1 4 48 (NE) 197 clear none 06:01 20 2 20 8 (N) 195 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 > 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.