From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20031210 Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 06:53:40 -0700 (MST) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, December 10, 2003 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- G.Wallerstein G.Wallerstein Echelle 17:30 06:30 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- UW10/R 17:55 05:57 0 0 0.4 0.5 0.1 11.0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: J.Barentine Opened at 17:00. Skies were clear except in the extreme SE, winds were light. Early on in the evening George reported repeatedly losing his objects off the slit while autoguiding. I asked him to pause his science exposure and quit the guider so I could try diagnosing the problem. His target was about halfway up in the northwest, and the direction the object was drifting registered vaguely with altitude. I had him slew to another object, this time high in the northeast nearing transit. Same behavior, identified this time with azimuth. A check of the flux in the autoguider boxes suggested that seeing was sufficiently bad to cause the guider to repeatedly issue inappropriate offsets. I advised him to go after brighter objects (these were around mag. 12-13), which appeared to solve the problem. At 21:30, George's shift+click offsets from the Echelle guider stopped coming through the MC. I had him restart his Remark and try again. The first guider image he took revealed fairly poor pointing at high (~70 deg) altitude, so we slewed down to 30 degrees and did a pointing correction with echpoint. This evidently solved the pointing problem. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Second half was clear with fairly good seeing. We had one case of bad pointing due to a magnesensor error, and several crashes of the slitviewer ICC (including three in less than half an hour near dawn!). These each cost a few minutes to sort out. There was yet another slitviewer crash at 05:50 which did not cost extra time, but was still annoying. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- UW10 E I/S 18:20 18:45 Ech autoguide failed on faint star UW10 E T/H 23:16 23:23 magnesensor error UW10 E I/S 05:05 05:20 Ech SV stealth crash UW10 E I/S 05:30 05:40 Ech SV double crash ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 17:59 Echelle -78(46) 175 62 1.4/3.0 224 11 red 1.76 18:37 Echelle -76(64) 298 45 1.3/2.1 226 11 clear 1.67 20:28 Echelle -48(-10) 260 67 1.1/1.3 267 15 clear 1.62 03:41 Echelle -25(-38) -41 64 0.3/-0.1 278 13 ND2 0.83 -------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 41 -6 8 265 (W) 324 Clear none 17:01 37 -9 12 259 (W) 252 Clear none 18:01 34 -11 12 240 (WSW) 277 Clear none 19:01 36 -4 10 231 (SW) 264 Clear none 20:01 34 0 10 239 (WSW) 243 Clear none 21:01 35 -1 12 268 (W) 263 Clear none 22:01 35 -10 15 268 (W) 328 Clear none 23:01 34 0 16 272 (W) 382 Clear none 00:01 35 3 16 270 (W) 430 Clear none 01:01 33 14 13 265 (W) 544 clear none 02:01 33 19 14 266 (W) 587 clear none 03:01 33 19 12 270 (W) 541 clear none 04:01 32 18 11 293 (WNW) 551 clear none 05:01 31 18 18 285 (WNW) 629 clear none 06:01 31 17 13 267 (W) 594 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 Telescope drives operational. Current Remark version: 2.85b Current guide software version: guider v4.1b4 Current TCC version: 2.7.2 Current TUI version: TUI-0.76