Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 05:30:19 -0600 (MDT) From: Jack Dembicky Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20010614 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, June 14th, 2001 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- J.Holtzman J.Holtzman DIS-Med 20:00 01:00 A.Kleinman A.Kleinman, E.Kinney DIS-Med 01:00 04:51 B.McLean INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- NM04/O 21:16 01:00 0 0 0.7 0 3.0 0 0 0 0 NM06/O 01:00 04:51 0 0 0 0 1.2 2.7 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: Jack Dembicky Started cooling the enclosure at 17:00. B.McLean (2nd half observers) took some dark frames with DIS in the late afternoon before we opened for the 1st half. Jon Holtzan also put some of his special slit masks in the DIS wheel A for tonight. The 2.0 slit was also installed in this wheel as it would be used 2nd half. 1st half observer started around 20:00 doing lamps. Opened the enclosure at 20:30. The guider would repeatedly quit working tonight (same problem as a couple nights ago). See Problem Log below for times and summary. Again, I fixed the problem the same way I did the other night and PRs were again issued. I called Craig and he suggested to try running the older guider software, this didn't solve the problem but made it much easier to fix when it did happen (I didn't have to keep re-booting the NA2gdr ICC MAC/contoller on the intermediate level. I also saved NA2 ICC output on NA2 ICC desktop for Craig to examine tommorow. Seeing was TOO GOOD during the first half of the night!!! I had to defocus the guider since it was reporting 0.7 or less arc sec seeing and the guider has problems differentiating stars that small. The sloanies were also bragging to us about them having EXCELLENT SEEING as well on all of their chips (0.8 or better). With Jon's slitmasks in, we could only measure the seeing from the guider (and hadn't refocused the instrument since the start of the night.). Instrument handover occured at 01:00 and I checked focus then as well. Seeing was around 1.1 arc sec. The guider again died during a focus check. This time (with older software running) a 'gcam init" reset the camera without the need to reboot/restart the guider/ICC computers. It took only a minute to do this. When the observers slewed to a relatively high airmass ( >2 ) I noticed oblong stars in the guider images. I went to check the JDavis computer output to see if we had mirror oscillation, but it was not giving output (although the computer was respoding to the mouse). I didn't know how to reset/restart the machine/output. PR submitted. I am testing out a new section in the night log called PROBLEM LOG. It is primarily meant for the APO Day staff use, who read these reports, to quickly asses the previous nights problems (or lack thereof) in a brief section of it's own. Let me know if you think it is useful, or not, and should be kept in the night logs (or is it just redundant and not a useful as a summary of night problems?). It is meant to be a BRIEF (ie. non detailed) log of nightly problems/fixes, if it they were fixed and what PR was associated with them (if one was submitted) including times when they occured. It IS NOT meant to be a replacement for the Problem Reporting at APO, just a quick summary of nightly problems (or hopefully lack there of). (Or would you rather just have it in the this section, the Activity log portion, or both?) --------------- PROBLEM LOG ---------------- Time Time Problem - Fix Loss (H) PR# ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21:45 NA2Guider failure - Reset,Restart 0.2 2001142 22:12 NA2Guider failure - Reset,Restart,Saved ICC log 0.2 -- 22:35 NA2Guider failure - Reset,Restart,Saved ICC log 0.2 -- 00:05 NA2Guider failure - Reset,Restart,Used ICC V3.0b27 software 0.1 2001143 01:15 NA2Guider failure - 'gcam init' only (worked with older software to reset guider) and 'set inst=dis' -- 03:25 NA2Guider failure - 'gcam init', 'set inst=dis' -- 03:35 NA2Guider failure - 'gcam init', 'set inst=dis' -- 04:15 JDavis no output - 2001144 --------------- INSTRUMENT FOCUS LOG ---------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:56 DISslit 90(1242) 39 52 12.9/14.1 337 13 none 1.16 20:58 NA2gdr -4058(51941) 39 52 12.9/14.1 337 13 none 1.22 01:13 DISslit 130(1177) -25 63 12.4/12.5 274 5 none 1.12 01:15 NA2gdr -1685(54314) -25 63 12.4/12.5 274 5 none 1.05 --------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 62 12 12 263 (W) 980 Clear none 17:01 59 12 13 279 (W) 1087 Clear none 18:01 60 12 12 270 (W) 1076 Clear none 19:01 57 10 12 338 (NNW) 1001 Clear none 20:01 56 10 11 323 (NW) 1043 Clear none 21:01 55 10 10 326 (NW) 1182 Clear none 22:01 56 12 16 315 (NW) 1209 Clear none 23:01 56 15 13 306 (NW) 1388 Clear none 00:01 55 11 13 308 (NW) 1213 Clear none 01:01 55 10 8 281 (W) 1074 Clear none 02:01 55 9 1 218 (SW) 1090 Clear none 03:01 54 10 0 135 (SE) 1132 Clear none 04:01 54 11 3 120 (ESE) 1309 Clear none 05:01 53 15 11 135 (SE) 1577 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.