Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 06:57:44 -0700 (MST) From: John Barentine Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20021211 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, December 11, 2002 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- G.Miknaitis G.Miknaitis SPIcam 23:00 00:00 D.Lamb G.Miknaitis SPIcam 00:00 01:00 D.Lamb C.Laws Echelle 01:05 01:50 D.Lamb J.Barentine SPIcam 02:00 06:25 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- UW04/R 23:00 00:00 0 0 0 5.1 0 1.0 0 0 0 UC02/R/D 00:00 05:58 0 0 0 0 5.6 0.4 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: J. Dembicky B. Ketzeback Opened enclosure at 20:00. Checked pointing and telescope drives with Shack-Hartman and the star came up on the screen with no problem. Jon D. said the drives looked fine with no drift or sudden movements of the star in the field. We next went over to a star in the same general region (Aldeberan) and it landed almost dead center on SPIcam. We focused and then started a 72 point pointing model. The pointing model completed sucessfully with only 1 star skipped due to clouds (we change to just the R filter for a few in that region of the sky) and one or two overexposed stars, but the model looked good with the majority of stars fitting in a 2.6 arc sec circle. The new pointing model was then implemented. We then switched over to the echelle to do a quick check to make sure it was pointing well and Betelguese fell almost directly on the slit. I then focused the telescope for the UW04 program and handed the telescope over to them at 23:00. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: J.Barentine Second half was a mixed bag, albeit a busy one. Clouds in the east prevented us from starting Don's program so while sorting out intranight scheduling details on the phone I had Gajus continue his observations. Don decided to cede 2 hours of time to Chris so he could get something useful out of the night while we waited for conditions to improve. Before Chris could get far into his program the sky cleared reasonably and Chris elected to offer the time back to Don, which Don took. After time to do the tertiary switch and then focus SPIcam, we were on the GRB afterglow at about 02:15. After a 2000 s exposure ending at about 04:45, we realized that our pointing was significantly off. This was after slewing to a standard at a higher elevation, taking a short exposure, and slewing back to the GRB. I killed the next exposure, already in progress, cleared any offsets in Remark, did a pointing correction, and slewed back to the GRB position. With crossed fingers, I started an integration. Same problem. I did another pointing correction which completed successfully but the pointing was still off significantly. Then I did some moves in the TCC in case the scope was simply lost to get it to cross magnasensors in both directions (but really suspecting azimuth). This worked. When I slewed back to the position of the standard, it was just outside the field. But there was still a definite position offset. In TUI it appeared to be roughly in azimuth although can't say that for sure. It seems likely that we experienced a slip earlier in the night and that subsequent positions were off. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- UW04 S T/H 17:56 23:00 on-sky recovery from az repairs ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 21:18 SPIcam -400(32) 115 60 -3.9/-2.3 23 12 r' 1.31 21:20 NA2gdr -2156() 115 59 -3.9/-2.3 344 9 R 1.02 23:03 SPIcam -130(186) 163 64 -4.6/-4.3 13 21 r' 0.95 23:15 NA2gdr -597(60402) 169 64 -4.6/-4.5 1 9 R 0.99 01:32 Echelle -17(-734) -50 49 -5.4/-5.7 2 26 clear 1.74 02:17 SPIcam -75(255) 162 63 -5.8/-6.1 20 18 i' 1.28 --------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 27 13 11 341 (NNW) 226 Pt. Cldy none 17:01 26 16 11 0 (N) 170 Pt. Cldy none 18:01 25 13 13 9 (N) 157 Pt. Cldy none 19:01 26 14 8 323 (NW) 145 Pt. Cldy none 20:01 26 16 10 344 (NNW) 164 Mst. Cldy none 21:01 25 17 5 353 (N) 152 Mst. Cldy none 22:01 25 18 3 307 (NW) 199 Mst. Cldy none 23:01 24 17 5 346 (NNW) 187 Mst. Cldy none 00:01 23 16 15 1 (N) 177 Ptly Cldy none 01:01 22 14 18 8 (N) 230 Ptly Cldy none 02:01 22 12 25 14 (NNE) 229 MstlyCldy none 03:01 21 12 24 16 (NNE) 230 Ptly Cldy none 04:01 20 12 29 19 (NNE) 214 Ptly Cldy none 05:01 21 11 21 19 (NNE) 228 Ptly Cldy none 06:01 21 9 29 6 (N) 261 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: 2.82 Current guide software version: GIm Ctrlv4.1b2 Current TCC version: 2.6.8