From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20031009 Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 05:15:43 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, October 9, 2003 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- B.Gillespie J.Barentine,R.McMillan NA2Gdr 00:20 02:10 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- EN01/O 19:31 06:10 0 8.9 0 0 0 1.8 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: J.Barentine Delayed checkout until near 21:00 MDT to accommodate continuing work on the observing level; while the weather initially looked promising, it was entirely too cloudy to open throughout this period. Shortly after midnight, Russet decided it was clear enough to open. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan I got started on a pointing model immediately and found that reports from the past month were understated; pointing was really awful. Pointing reference stars frequently did not show up on the guider at all (FOV 2.4 arcmin!). After quite a bit of effort and tweaking of parameters I managed to get the model going mostly on its own, but it still required some babysitting. A couple of waves of thinner clouds moved through just to make things interesting, then some thick clouds arrived after 02:00 and cut us off after we'd gotten 65 points (out of a planned 80). This was enough to reduce the pointing data, so there should be considerable improvement in pointing at least for the short term (it's unclear what caused it to get so bad over the past month, or whether that might happen again). The thick clouds stuck around for a while and eventually turned into fog. So unfortunately I didn't have time to get to anything besides the pointing model. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 56 52 4 258 (WSW) 183 Overcast none 17:01 52 50 0 336 (NNW) 204 Overcast none 18:01 53 50 1 269 (W) 162 Overcast none 19:01 52 49 0 65 (ENE) 150 MstlyCldy none 20:01 51 48 8 81 (E) 151 PtlyCldy none 21:01 51 45 8 84 (E) 73 MstlyCldy none 22:01 50 43 7 89 (E) 74 MstlyCldy none 23:01 51 41 13 109 (ESE) 84 MstlyCldy none 00:01 51 41 15 110 (ESE) 56 MstlyCldy none 01:01 51 40 13 144 (SE) 67 ptly cldy none 02:01 51 41 18 152 (SSE) 53 ptly cldy none 03:01 50 46 14 158 (SSE) 48 mstly cldy none 04:01 50 48 8 175 (S) 85 mstly cldy fog 05:01 49 49 9 185 (S) 3031 mstly cldy fog 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 Telescope drives operational. Current Remark version: 2.85b Current guide software version: guider v4.1b4 Current TCC version: 2.7.1 Current TUI version: TUI-0.70