From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20011015 Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 06:32:58 -0600 (MDT) APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5m Telescope Night Log Monday, October 15th, 2001 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- C.Stubbs A.Miceli,R.Covarrubias SPIcam 18:20 20:12 21:06 00:58 S.Raymond S.Raymond DIS-High 01:11 06:17 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- UW05/R 19:23 01:00 0 0 0.9 0 4.7 0 0 0 0 UW07/R 01:00 06:15 0 0 0.1 0 5.2 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: Camron Hastings Today the IR camera was worked on in the afternoon and appears to be in better shape than before (I think it is the best that I have seen in many a moon!). The dome opened and telescope cooled without difficulty. All instruments appeared to be functioning normally under photometric skies and decent seeing. After the first slew we found a serious pointing problem. Luckily Craig Loomis and Russet were here and after some troubleshooting of log info we concluded that the tertiary was lost. Evidently a mistyped command yesterday led to the mirror being mislead as to its actual position. This was easily corrected once found and we were pointing well again afterwards. Soon after, I noticed periodic spikes in the enclosure telemetry data. It was noted in the hub log and happened around 21:20 MDT. These spikes continued and at times were somewhat random, but for the most part were periodic every 5 seconds. No noises could be heard in the enclosure (like creaks or pops) that correlated with the spikes. At times the spikes were as close together as 1.2 seconds. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: Russet McMillan Around midnight, a new airmass moved in with much warmer air, and the wind shifted southward. Seeing improved to about 1.2 arcsec for a little while, but the rapid temperature changes made it a challenge to stay in focus. Later the seeing became unstable again, jumping from 1.5 to 2.5 arcseconds on timescales of seconds. At one point, I saw some signs of image elongation that might be related to the noise from the enclosure motors. Most of the time, the variable seeing made it impossible to detect subtle effects on image quality. I did try taking a few minutes between targets to reset the enclosure controller, without effect. The dust counts rose in the later part of the morning, but adjustments to the fans kept the interior counts in check until a final spike just as twilight began. ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:45 SPIcam -100(520) 85 59 3.4/4.9 79 27 r' 2.56" 21:20 NA2 Gdr 613(61614) 67 65 1.3/1.8 74 24 R 3.77" 00:50 SPIcam 125(755) 229 44 6.2/2.7 102 2 r' 2.5 01:24 DISslit 250(768) 220 50 6.9/3.4 174 2 - 1.43 01:29 NA2gdr -533(56466) 222 49 7.9/3.4 124 1 R 1.19 02:34 DISslit 100(637) 196 56 5.9/4.3 147 2 - 1.52 --------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 51 23 16 73 (ENE) 610 clear none 17:01 48 25 18 73 (ENE) 770 clear none 18:01 44 26 19 66 (ENE) 866 clear none 19:01 40 27 23 75 (ENE) 931 clear none 20:01 37 28 19 76 (ENE) 1078 clear none 21:01 35 28 21 76 (ENE) 947 clear none 22:01 34 27 19 71 (ENE) 874 clear none 23:01 34 26 15 71 (ENE) 744 clear none 00:01 38 22 8 87 (E) 900 clear none 01:01 44 19 2 125 (SE) 592 clear none 02:01 43 18 12 127 (SE) 621 clear none 03:01 42 20 7 143 (SE) 1368 clear none 04:01 41 21 13 127 (SE) 1887 clear none 05:01 40 20 3 112 (ESE) 2232 mstly clr none 06:01 41 20 4 161 (SSE) 2435 mstly clr 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 Ctrlv4.1b2. Current TCC version: 2.5.5 Current MC version: v1_7_3.