From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20010322 Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 06:07:57 -0700 (MST) APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, March 22nd, 2001 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- R.Kron R.Kron, B.Wilhite SPIcam 19:20 05:45 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- UC02/O 19:10 05:09 0.2 0 0.1 0 9.7 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st & 2nd half Observing Specialist: Russet McMillan Threatening clouds with nearby virga and some precipitation on radar prevented us from opening before sunset, but we were able to open and get started not too long after the end of twilight. Cirrus during the first few hours of the evening cleared off before midnight. Seeing ranged from excellent to good all night long; I reduced the binning on the guider for all of first half to avoid undersampling. There were several hours during first half with delivered seeing on 10-minute exposures in the range 0.6-0.7 arcseconds. Around midnight, the wind picked up a little and we started to see signs of windshake on targets which were close to the wind direction, but most images were still better than an arcsecond and the worst were only around 1.2 arcseconds. Pointing away from the wind restored the very good seeing again. In general, the telescope and instruments were well behaved aside from some image jumps which appeared wind-related. We did lose about five minutes to a guider failure, but everything worked normally after the controller and software were restarted. --------------- INSTRUMENT FOCUS LOG ---------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:34 SPIcam -50(1127) 184 57 9.2/10.3 219 6 i' 0.7 21:47 SPIcam 25(1104) -1 61 8.1/8.3 287 14 i' 0.60 21:49 NA2gdr -1000(59000) -2 61 8.3/8.2 285 14 none 0.67 01:18 SPIcam 50(1098) -60 57 7.2/7.4 313 22 i' 0.84 ------------- WEATHER CONDITIONS ------------ Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 17:01 50 10 10 314 (NW) 147 ptly cldy none 18:01 48 9 3 358 (N) 189 ptly cldy none 19:01 48 9 4 266 (W) 153 ptly cldy none 20:01 47 10 8 248 (WSW) 196 cirrus none 21:01 47 10 13 262 (W) 207 cirrus none 22:01 47 9 10 274 (W) 165 mstly clr none 23:01 47 10 16 282 (WNW) 183 clear none 00:01 46 13 16 301 (WNW) 243 clear none 01:01 45 12 18 302 (WNW) 197 clear none 02:01 45 13 23 305 (NW) 210 clear none 03:01 44 13 11 321 (NW) 222 clear none 04:01 44 14 18 308 (NW) 193 clear none 05:01 44 15 17 314 (NW) 234 clear none 06:01 43 15 15 326 (NW) 240 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: 2.5.1 Current MC version: v1_7_3.