From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20010827 Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 02:31:03 -0600 (MDT) APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5m Telescope Night Log Monday, August 27th, 2001 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- B.Gillespie R.McMillan, S-H,SPIcam, 20:15 00:15 R.Loewenstein Echslit INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- EN01/O 20:31 05:39 3.9 1.6 0 0 0 3.7 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: Russet McMillan The night started out mostly clear. I started with the Shack-Hartmann immediately after opening in hopes of improving on last night's thermal tests, but tonight's seeing was much worse. After several measurements that were clearly useless, with no sign of improvement imminent, I handed the telescope over to Bob Loewenstein for tests of the echelle autoguiding algorithms. He obtained some data that he believes will be useful in refining the algorithms; this was the highlight of the night. More throughput tests were also on the slate to allow a comparison of SPIcam against the new guider filters, but the weather didn't appear photometric. Other desired tests included guider image quality or focus changes vs. rotational position (counterindicated because of the variable seeing) and off-axis focus donuts for checking the collimation (also ruined by the seeing). I did try taking some collimation images with SPIcam, but they were very fuzzy and not much use. While Bob was observing, we noticed that the pointing with the echelle was very poor, off by >20 arcsec. It was also poor with the S-H earlier, but I was hoping that was one target with bad coordinates. When we confirmed that this happened on multiple targets even with good coordinates, I checked the pointing on SPIcam and found the same problem there. In retrospect, I was able to trace the change in pointing back to some of last night's tests, sometime during a 5-minute window between successive SPIcam images. I spent some time searching encoder logs to see what might have moved during that window, but no anomalies were apparent. I considered doing a pointing model, which is less sensitive to image quality, but it would just have to be redone when the collimation is adjusted as planned tomorrow or Wednesday. At 00:15, with the seeing worse than 3 arcseconds, clouds moving in, and the humidity climbing, I decided to call it a night. ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:39 Echelle 150(584) 16 67 13.7/16.7 65 20 NA1 2.11 --------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 18:01 63 47 0 162 (SSE) ptly cldy none 19:01 61 41 14 75 (ENE) 210 mstly clr none 20:01 58 42 17 74 (ENE) 181 mstly clr none 21:01 56 41 22 72 (ENE) 246 mstly clr none 22:01 56 42 16 64 (ENE) 242 mstly clr none 23:01 54 43 20 75 (ENE) 234 mstly clr none 00:01 54 45 18 78 (ENE) 249 ptly cldy none 01:01 51 48 19 69 (ENE) 256 ptly 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.