Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 04:55:45 -0600 (MDT) From: John Barentine Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20020624 APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY 3.5m Telescope Night Log Monday, June 24, 2002 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- B.Gillespie J.Barentine DISII 21:00 23:40 SPIcam 23:53 04:50 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- EN01/O 21:19 04:53 0 0 0 0 0 7.6 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Barentine Opened the enclosure to cool just after 19:30. All day the skies have been full of smoke from the fires in east-central Arizona, and by sunset there were a few clouds up there as well. The smoke wiped any throughput measurements we might have made completely off the slate for tonight. The DIS slit camera was behaving erratically as has been seen in recent weeks, making it only marginally useful. Clouds moved in shortly after I started focusing the slit camera but did not appear to threaten rain. While waiting for the sky to clear up, I played with issuing commands to the TCC from remark and from within TCC: moves, offsets, etc. After trying out TCC for a while, I started the blind Echelle pointing model around 23:10. Skies were looking MUCH better by this time. However, the pointing model didn't work. Remark kept honking and complaining that the "instrument rotator failed to slew" each time I tried starting the pointing model. There was no star at the position is slewed to anyway, as revealed on the Echelle slit camera. I don't know if this is a TCC problem or not. So I did an axis stop/axis init/set inst=echelle and pointed to a catalog star, which appeared right in the slitviewer. Then I tried the pointing model again. The software slewed back to the same place on the sky as before and again found no star. Commanding the software to skip the current star and go on to the next resulted in a failed slew and another report of "Star not found". Since there was no obvious way to fix any of this, I gave up on the pointing model. Switched to SPIcam for baffling tests. All images are in /export/images/eng020625 OFFSET IMAGE EXPTIME ------ ----- ------- OFFSET CALIB 2.0, 0.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0001 1s eng020625.0002 5s (bracketing) eng020625.0003 10s eng020625.0004 20s eng020625.0005 60s (counts only up to around 10000) eng020625.0006 180s (that worked! Max counts around 30K) OFFSET CALIB 4.0, 0.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0007 180s (counts about 10K) eng020625.0008 540s (counts about 25K) OFFSET CALIB 8.0, 0.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0009 540s (max counts only about 5K but these exposures are getting WAY long...) OFFSET CALIB 12.0, 0.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0010 540s (max counts about 2.5K) OFFSET CALIB 16.0, 0.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0011 540s (max counts about 3.5K) OFFSET CALIB 0.0, 2.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0012 540s (max counts ~35K) OFFSET CALIB 0.0, 4.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0013 540s (max counts 17K) OFFSET CALIB 0.0, 8.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0014 540s (max counts ~6K) OFFSET CALIB 0.0, 12.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0015 540s (max counts ~4.5K) OFFSET CALIB 0.0, 16.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0016 540s (max counts ~3.5K) Unfiltered flat eng020625.0017 5s Unfiltered flat eng020625.0018 10s Removed as much as I could see of the baffling closest to the instrument and repeated. OFFSET CALIB 2.0, 0.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0019 180s (bad, put the pinhole back in...!) eng020625.0020 180s (much better... counts about 30K) OFFSET CALIB 4.0, 0.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0021 540s (counts about 20K) OFFSET CALIB 8.0, 0.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0022 540s (counts almost 8K) OFFSET CALIB 12.0, 0.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0023 540s (counts about 4K) OFFSET CALIB 16.0, 0.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0024 540s (counts 3K) OFFSET CALIB 0.0, 2.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0025 540s (counts 40K) OFFSET CALIB 0.0, 4.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0026 540s (counts about 12.5K) OFFSET CALIB 0.0, 8.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0027 540s (counts 5K) OFFSET CALIB 0.0, 12.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0028 540s (counts 3K) OFFSET CALIB 0.0, 16.0 /COMPUTED /PABS eng020625.0029 540s (counts 2.5K) Unfiltered flat eng020625.0030 5s Unfiltered flat eng020625.0031 10s Went upstairs and put the baffle back in. Just before the end of the night I tried the Echelle blind pointing model again with the same results. Something's clearly wrong, but whether it's me or the TCC etc. I don't know. All in all, a comedy of errors for the most part, for my first solo engineering night. Better luck next time. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE TIME S/E/G/D/O TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 21:55 DISslit -50(1105) 259 54 18.5/20.1 128 16 - 1.50 22:06 NA2gdr 2594(56594) 261 52 18.3/19.7 117 11 clear 1.57 --------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 76 29 1 354 (N) 2963 MstlyClr none 17:01 76 31 9 262 (W) 3547 MstlyClr none 18:01 74 29 6 267 (W) 3493 MstlyClr none 19:01 74 31 11 221 (SW) 3577 MstlyClr none 20:01 69 32 7 177 (S) 3817 PtlyCldy none 21:01 66 34 6 132 (SE) 3406 MstlyCldy none 22:01 65 36 15 139 (SE) 3059 MstlyCldy none 23:01 63 38 17 122 (ESE) 2158 PtlyCldy none 00:01 63 38 15 132 (SE) 2045 PtlyCldy none 01:01 66 37 11 185 (S) 4197 MstlyClr none 02:01 65 38 9 207 (SSW) 2293 MstlyClr none 03:01 64 37 12 182 (S) 1957 MstlyClr none 04:01 64 37 10 179 (S) 2188 MstlyClr 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: 2.6.3