From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20010824 Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2001 05:56:03 -0600 (MDT) APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5m Telescope Night Log Friday, August 24th, 2001 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- B.Gillespie R.McMillan,J.Davis Spicam, S-H, 19:30 05:40 NA2Gdr, Echslit INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- EN01/O 20:33 05:38 0 0 0 0 6.0 3.1 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: Russet McMillan The weather showed cirrus and patchy thicker clouds, with generally good seeing when it was measured. The dome was opened for cooling at 19:00, and we started work as soon as it was dark enough to see the brightest stars. I assisted Jon Davis in collimating the primary mirror. After a few glitches, we got some lovely looking images with the secondary in a flat position at an altitude of 65 degrees. I left the secondary sag coefficients at the values calculated last year. After Jon left, I started on instrument blocks. I did a SPIcam block and had just started a guider block when some image oscillations started to appear. These didn't appear to be coming from any of the three mirrors according to any of our monitoring equipment. At two different sky positions, the oscillations were consistent with the direction of azimuth motions, so they might be coming from the altitude motor. It appeared identical to an intermittent problem we experienced several times in the last few months, but not too serious. Over the remainder of the night, the oscillations appeared on some targets but usually damped out after a minute or so. I did some tests of guider focus through different filters, but it was difficult to analyze the data because the seeing was too good for the guider. So I went on to pointing models. The first model was challenging because the pointing was off by more than an arcminute and patchy clouds made the stars come and go. I got a small 20-point model which showed large changes in the parameters CA and PZZ1. The second model was 85 points and went much more smoothly, with stars consistently coming up centered. A pointing reference catalog in the range 6-8 magnitudes works reasonably well with our Red+ND2 filter under mostly clear conditions. There were no ambiguous identifications. Both models gave a StdDev of 3.5 arcsec. Next I adjusted the tertiary tip/tilts for the echelle and Shack-Hartmann, starting with SPIcam as a reference point and rotating the tertiary at altitudes of 60-70 degrees. This was not the full test of tertiary rotational stability which will come later in the on-sky tests; however, the tertiary behavior did look nicely repeatable during these tests, which bodes well. I found a large change in focus for the Shack-Hartmann, bringing the secondary to an almost uncomfortably high position; it may be desirable to move the instrument up as much as two centimeters. The tertiary positions for the Shack-Hartmann were also very different from what we expected (they were supposed to be quite close to the NA2 tip/tilts). The echelle tip/tilts required considerable adjustment also. However, the values I found work adequately, and the change may be due to the improved stiffness of the tertiary mounting. By 04:30, more clouds were moving in, making it difficult to do anything quantitative, so I just finished up with some checks of blind pointing with the echelle and Shack-Hartmann to confirm the tertiary tilts. These tests went well, with no signs of the tertiary instability that caused some echelle pointing problems in the past. Scheduled for tomorrow: Shack-Hartmann tests. ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 22:10 SPIcam 0(1583) 161 65 18.9/19.7 260 4 R 0.80 22:47 NA2gdr -292(59707) 183 66 18.7/19.4 182 4 Clear 0.66 22:50 NA2gdr -352(59647) 185 66 18.6/19.3 182 2 R 0.73 03:34 S-H 1100(3057)* 39 65 18.1/18.0 259 5 - ?? 04:12 Echelle 8(474) 29 69 17.9/17.7 192 1 clear 1.06 * The zero-point focus for this instrument was changed after measurement --------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 18:01 73 35 7 241 (WSW) 302 ptly cldy none 19:01 68 36 6 267 (W) 408 mstly clr none 20:01 66 36 4 271 (W) 441 ptly cldy none 21:01 66 36 2 280 (W) 401 ptly cldy none 22:01 66 35 2 252 (WSW) 464 ptly cldy none 23:01 66 36 4 190 (S) 437 mstly clr none 00:01 65 36 6 213 (SSW) 472 ptly cldy none 01:01 66 35 5 231 (SW) 437 ptly cldy none 02:01 66 34 2 255 (WSW) 397 ptly cldy none 03:01 65 36 4 257 (WSW) 766 ptly cldy none 04:01 64 36 4 244 (WSW) 551 ptly cldy none 05:01 63 36 5 179 (S) 583 mstly cldy 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: 2.5.4 Current MC version: v1_7_3.