From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20021121 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 06:39:00 -0700 (MST) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, November 21, 2002 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- G.Miknaitis G.Miknaitis SPIcam 18:30 23:48 J.Bally J.Bally, E.Andrews, Echelle 00:05 06:30 K.Anderson, A.Bieryla, D.Fayed, K.Kretke, J.Pipis, M.Whelan, R.Bruels, C.Gilmer, L.Preston, J.Thiel INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- UW04/R 17:56 00:00 0 0 0.4 0.2 0 5.7 0 0 0 CU01/O 00:00 05:43 0 0 0 0.7 0 5.7 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback Today the engineering staff investigated the report of a 'wobble' in azimuth axis motion. Due to this work the telescope was not operational at the end of twilight. Therefore, the first observing program lost about 30 minutes of their scheduled time. The first few science images did not appear to show last nights reported problems. The seeing and image quality appeared moderate to good. The seeing degraded around 22:15. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Second half was clear with variable seeing (about 1-3 arcsec), large temperature changes resulting in large focus changes, and quite a number of problems. The azimuth wobble of last night returned, although less severely than before. It didn't prevent science, but did make guiding a little more difficult. It might be more of a problem for imaging programs, although the first half observing didn't have any difficulty. There was also a problem with the echelle ThAr lamp being too faint, possibly a bulb-burnout although the lamp was giving some light. And we discovered that slitviewer images taken through the "clear" filter are consistently dimmer than images through the "red" and "blue" filters, suggesting that the slit wheel may be off. A little after 02:20, the observers reported to me that their image (started some minutes before) seemed to be hung up on readout. I found that the ICC was frozen -- it would let me move the mouse cursor, but I couldn't click on anything. When I rebooted, it froze up again as soon as the program started. I phoned Craig, who found that the crash during readout had been badly timed and left something incompleted. He fixed that and restarted the MC, and it seemed fine. This is the first heavy crash of the echelle ICC in quite a long time, possibly due to the aging of the computer itself. Once we got the echelle going again, the only other challenges of the night were following the changing focus and keeping track of the large number of on-site observers. We finished up the night in a very enjoyable fashion, looking at the Orion Nebula and Jupiter with an eyepiece on the NA2 focus! ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- UW04 S T/H 17:56 18:30 AZ Motor box work CU01 E I/S 02:16 02:56 Ech ICC crashed hard ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:41 SPIcam -200(744) 225 48 5.6/6.8 26 12 r 1.2 18:54 NA2gdr -798(60201) 203 54 5.6/6.6 24 11 R 1.2 20:15 SPIcam -50(838) 199 56 6.6/6.0 32 13 r 1.0 20:17 NA2gdr -1000(60000) 200 56 6.7/6.0 32 14 R 0.84 00:27 Echelle 100(-206) 154 49 4.9/3.4 152 1 Clear 1.5 01:42 Echelle 146(-140) 184 52 5.5/4.2 186 5 clear 1.16 03:30 Echelle -126(-388) 221 43 5.3/4.0 162 0 Clear 1.42 04:43 Echelle 78(-140) 238 30 5.6/4.0 209 1 Clear 1.26 --------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 44 8 4 287 (WNW) 110 Clear None 17:01 42 9 11 23 (NNE) 123 Clear None 18:01 43 8 16 31 (NNE) 30 Clear None 19:01 42 10 9 40 (NE) 127 Clear None 20:01 44 12 12 38 (NE) 91 Clear None 21:01 43 13 10 37 (NE) 112 Clear None 22:01 40 15 10 48 (NE) 169 Clear None 23:01 37 17 12 54 (NE) 170 Clear None 00:01 39 15 0 322 (NW) 178 clear none 01:01 42 12 1 188 (S) 182 clear none 02:01 42 11 4 182 (S) 142 clear none 03:01 41 14 2 131 (SE) 161 clear none 04:01 42 13 0 181 (S) 123 clear none 05:01 42 14 1 189 (S) 159 clear none 06:01 42 14 1 183 (S) 143 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: 2.82 Current guide software version: GIm Ctrlv4.1b2 Current TCC version: 2.6.8