From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20021212 Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 06:46:50 -0700 (MST) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, December 12, 2002 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- S.Anderson S.Anderson DIS 18:20 00:47 N.Chanover N.Chanover,D.Kuehn MWIR 01:45 06:25 D.Glenar,D.Voelz, S.Campbell,M.Itagaki, T.Temma,C.Braley,M.Deramo INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- UW07/R 17:55 00:00 0 0 0 0 0 6.1 0 0 0 NM01/O 00:00 05:59 0 0 0.6 1.3 4.1 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: W.Ketzeback I started up the fans and opened the louvers early today to try to dump some of the excess heat in the enclosure last night at the beginning of the night. Closed louvers when the observer was ready to start Cals. The observer was doing Cals during twilight so I used the first 20 minutes of their scheduled time to check the pointing. Remarkably, considering the problems reported last night with pointing tonight the pointing seemed quite reasonable. I pointed the telescope to about a dozen bright stars at a variety of altitudes and azimuths that all had good positions. In all cases they appeared in the field and near or on the slit. I choose not to do a pointing model and turn the telescope over to the observer. Skies were clear but with some cirrus and seeing was moderate to good at the beginning of the night. There was one field that the observer could not find. However, slewing across a set of magnasenors seemed to correct this pointing glitch. The observer reported the x-instrument offsets that the dis-slitviewer reports sometimes has the wrong sign (+/-). He said that he has seen 2 instances where the slitview offset directions in x flip by 180 degrees. So if he puts his cursor on the object and did an 'i' on the slitview image, it indicated that he should offset by about -17 in X, but in fact, it really needed to offset by +17. I spoke with Russet and learned this was a known problem amongst observers but no one bothered to tell the Obs-Specs until this past October and it has been reported as a known bug but not yet fixed. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Second half started inauspiciously when the observers discovered that their chip heater had turned off and allowed the instrument to cool to a dangerous, possibly catastrophic temperature. Fortunately, after slow warming it appeared no damage had been done. The instrument block for was successful but slow, since significant changes had been made since the instrument was last here. In fact, at the request of the observers, I gave it a new name for the instrument block: MWIR, for Mid-Wave InfraRed Acousto-Optic Tunable Filter. This way, if they bring back the older version of AOTF, the old instrument block will be ready and waiting. We did have some trouble at one point when the pointing went wonky. The first suspect was the instrument or the instrument block, so it took a while for me to realize that there had been several bad magnasensor measurements in altitude. A couple of quick slews cleared up the problem, but it's unusual for it to happen in the middle of the night. This problem cost about 15 minutes. We were done with the instrument block and ready to start data-taking by 04:00. The next challenge was finding planets (giant gaseous planets within 20 AU), which seemed to be invisible to the instrument. We weren't entirely sure if the planetary pointing was correct or not, but whenever we pointed at stars they came up quite nicely centered, so nothing seemed to be wrong with the telescope. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NM01 V I/H 00:15 01:45 chip heater turned off, slow warming NM01 V T/H 03:33 03:48 bad alt magnasensor measurements ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:34 DISslit 0(152) 195 51 -2.7/-2.8 334 15 - 1.02 18:37 NA2gdr -1596(51403) 196 51 -2.6/-2.9 321 18 R 0.89 02:51 MWIR 2250(1603)* 305 54 -2.2/-3.7 24 26 L ?? * The focus zero-point was changed after this measurement --------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 27 12 9 313 (NW) 315 Clear None 17:01 28 12 8 2 (N) 294 Clear None 18:01 27 13 4 354 (N) 330 Lt Cirrus None 19:01 27 13 13 329 (NNW) 283 Lt Cirrus None 20:01 27 14 14 326 (NW) 307 Clear None 21:01 27 14 6 1 (N) 295 Clear None 22:01 27 15 14 348 (NNW) 243 Clear None 23:01 26 15 13 28 (NNE) 262 Clear None 00:01 26 15 13 25 (NNE) 228 clear none 01:01 25 15 23 10 (N) 250 clear none 02:01 27 13 17 12 (NNE) 113 clear none 03:01 29 11 21 14 (NNE) 61 clear none 04:01 28 11 18 22 (NNE) 71 clear none 05:01 27 13 19 27 (NNE) 80 clear none 06:01 29 12 25 15 (NNE) 97 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