Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 05:28:12 -0600 (MDT) From: Jack Dembicky Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20010531 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, May 31th, 2001 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- G.Miknaitis G.Miknaitis SPIcam 20:10 00:52 J.Strasburg D.York S.Friedman, Echelle 00:54 04:20 P.Sonnentrucker 04:32 05:05 E.Turner J.Dembicky SPIcam 04:20 04:32 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- UW10/R 21:08 01:00 0 0 0 0.3 0 3.6 0 0 0 UC04/R/D 01:00 04:25 0 0 0 0 1.4 2.3 0 0 0 PU05/O 04:25 04:54 0 0 0 0 0.2 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: Jack Dembicky I opened the louvers/turned exhaust fans on at 18:45 tonight. Opened the enclosure and mirror covers to start cooling at 19:30. Instrument was turned over to the observers at 20:10. During focus we found a problem with the NA2Guider focus routine not reading correctly (It was taking a dark instead of an read) from the new TCC software installed today(?). I called Russ Owen and he fixed the problem. Lost about 5 mins due to this. After the fix, everthing ran fine. SPIcam locked up at 23:05 and I had to go up and reset it. Lost about 15 mins due to this. Seeing was between 1 and 2 arc sec for the first half but got worse, 2-3 arc sec, around 00:30 when we had a wind shift. Again the efocus routine had problems with such poor seeing. I manually focused the echelle and found the best focus to give almost 3 arc sec seeing (which was about what we were getting during the last part of the first half). At 04:20 I checked the seeing with the NA2 guider (did a focus run) at the coordinates for 2237. Best seeing measurement for the guider was 2.2 arc sec. (SPIcam would possibly get slightly better results, but with seeing this poor I didn't want to take the time to do a focus run with SPIcam). I donated the time to the 2nd half program (UC04) since we cannot get anything useful on 2237 with seeing >1.5 arc sec. . --------------- INSTRUMENT FOCUS LOG ---------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:43 SPIcam -50(1355) 93 77 16.3/18.8 236 13 z' 0.82 21:15 NA2gdr 1527(61527) 64 32 16.4/18.0 242 9 none 2.31 23:36 SPIcam 25(1417) 47 50 16.2/16.5 179 13 r' 1.13 23:43 NA2gdr 294(60294) 47 50 16.2/16.5 179 13 none 1.53 00:57 Echelle 0(397) 162 30 13.3/14.9 152 9 nd1 2.92 ------------- WEATHER CONDITIONS ------------ Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 17:01 70 24 11 290 (WNW) 976 Pt. Cldy none 18:01 70 27 10 268 (W) 1042 Pt. Cldy none 19:01 68 28 7 261 (W) 1300 Pt. Cldy none 20:01 63 27 7 258 (WSW) 1464 Pt. Cldy none 21:01 61 28 11 236 (SW) 1776 Pt. Cldy none 22:01 62 29 10 224 (SW) 1694 Clear none 23:01 62 28 11 209 (SSW) 1543 Clear none 00:01 59 30 10 203 (SSW) 1952 Clear none 01:01 56 39 13 144 (SE) 1670 Clear none 02:01 57 33 8 177 (S) 2131 Clear none 03:01 57 34 4 157 (SSE) 1802 Clear none 04:01 55 36 2 103 (ESE) 1975 Clear none 05:01 58 30 1 176 (S) 2323 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 Ctrlv4.1b2. Current TCC version: 2.5.3 Current MC version: v1_7_3.