From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20020220 Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 05:53:15 -0700 (MST) APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, February 20th, 2002 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- D.York D.York Echelle 18:00 20:49 G.Wallerstein G.Wallerstein Echelle 20:50 00:10 J.Holtzman J.Holtzman Echelle 00:10 04:40 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- DD03/R 18:17 20:47 0 0 0 0 0 2.0 0.5 0 0 UW04/R 20:47 00:10 0 0 0 1.5 0 1.9 0 0 0 NM06/R 00:10 05:47 1.1 0 0 0 3.0 1.5 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: J.Barentine Since the weather looked good enough to get in the DD03 observations of the M74 hypernova as scheduled, I opened a bit early around 16:45 to light winds and thin cirrus over part of the sky. Don logged in at 17:30 to begin Echelle calibrations and was on-sky shortly after sunset. Don found a star for us to focus on and after focusing was complete, asked for a pointing correction since the star was near the edge of the slitviewer frame. When I issued the TRACK/PTERR command, I received this: track/pterr 0 1 > Started; Cmd='track/pterr' 0 1 > Started; Text="pointing error sequence begins" 0 1 I Text="searching catalog for a nearby position reference star" 0 0 I TrackAdvTime=3.50 0 1 I PtRefPos = 27.086745, 0.000000, 4520971965.33000, 17.022646, 0.000000, 4520971965.33000 0 1 I AzAltDist=0.0688 0 1 I Text="slewing to pointing reference star" 0 1 W Text="new position rejected"; AxisNoSlew=F,F,T; RejectedAxisErrCode="OK","OK","NotAvailable" 0 1 F Text="slew failed" 0 0 I TCCStatus="TT-","NNN"; TCCPos=-76.92,50.00,NaN; AxePos=-76.92,50.00,NaN 0 0 I AxisErrCode="OK","OK","NotAvailable" I tried things like changing my Remark priority, having Don turn off the autoguider, etc., but could not cause it to move to the reference star. In the interest of conserving time, he decided that we should not lose any more time trying to fix it and that he should just use offsets to correct for it. Russet logged on from home and suggested we try essentially "tricking" the TCC into thinking that there was a set rotation for NA1, since this was something of a known bug, by setting inst=an NA2 instrument and then doing a rot 0 mount. I tried this between objects while Don was observing but got the same error message. Don ended a little late, with George's blessing. After a short tutorial on the Echelle autoguider, George was on-sky. The pointing correction problem continued to plague observations; with the field rotation native to the Echelle, it was difficult to ascertain the "right" star in a field. Russet came in around 22:30 and determined a stop-gap solution involving adjustments to the tertiary. We lost about a half hour of time pursuing this avenue, after wasting an hour observing the wrong star. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Second half was partly cloudy with mediocre seeing. The clouds started in the northwest at midnight and gradually took over the sky, until we closed at 04:40 with precipitation approaching on radar. Everything worked well, except that the echelle autoguider had some trouble coping when targets were moving in and out of clouds. After the adjustments to the tertiary, the echelle pointing was adequate although it might still be improved with more work. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG/INST FAILURE MODE TIME S/E/G/D/O TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- UW04/E T/SH 21:10 22:40 ech pointing off -- tert flop? ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 23:40 Echelle 135(-342) 300 35 2.3/2.3 297 11 Clear 1.43 02:09 Echelle 100(-542) -8 80 0.5/1.0 5 6 ND1 1.51 --------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 38 16 4 359 (N) 88 PtlyCldy none 17:01 39 17 14 311 (NW) 140 PtlyCldy none 18:01 37 17 6 278 (W) 145 MstlyClr none 19:01 37 17 14 288 (WNW) 137 Clear none 20:01 38 17 9 324 (NW) 256 Clear none 21:01 38 18 15 318 (NW) 236 Clear none 22:01 37 18 1 45 (NE) 220 Clear none 23:01 37 19 5 336 (NNW) 140 Clear none 00:01 36 20 13 314 (NW) 133 ptly cldy none 01:01 34 20 15 287 (WNW) 108 ptly cldy none 02:01 33 20 6 338 (NNW) 112 ptly cldy none 03:01 32 19 10 345 (NNW) 146 ptly cldy none 04:01 31 21 18 322 (NW) 109 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: 2.80b Current guide software version: GIm Ctrlv4.1b2 Current TCC version: 2.6.1 Current MC version: v1_7_3