Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20031218 Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 06:38:24 -0700 (MST) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu (Bill Ketzeback) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, December 18, 2003 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- N.Silvestri K.Covey DIS 17:20 21:30 N.Silvestri DIS 21:30 03:30 A.West DIS 03:30 06:37 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- UW03/R 17:58 06:02 0 0 0.2 0 8.5 3.4 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback The night had plenty of cirrus and average seeing. At 1940 the observer reported that objects were drifting off the slit. The first thing that I noticed was that there were no current magnasensor readings. I corrected and had the observer return on the sky in 2 minutes. At 1950, the observer said his remark controls were slow to respond or several controls were greyed out. In particular, Remark would not let him do offsets. I suspected that it was an internet slowdown. I had Craig look at that. However, that did not seem to be the problem. The observer continued to take data but at a slower rate due to the extra time it took to issue commands. At 2045, Craig noted that he had discovered the problem. The serial port of the guider icc had locked up and was causing the tcc/hub to do some rather weird things. The guider didnt occur to me to be the problem earlier since there were no guide failure messages, however, I had just missed some timeout messages not attached to sound cues. We shut down the guider and had the observer nudge the object back on the slit as necessary. At 0315, Craig had returned the guider back to service and at the changeover to observer number 3 I started to use the guider again without problems. Since the observers took data through the entire problem but with some difficulty I'm counting 10 minutes lost to equipment. Two large image jumps were seen at 0012 and 0205 that I was afraid were related to the secondary problems from earlier however upon closer inspection it was due to lack of frequent collimation updates (incremental focus updates) on my part. The user was sitting on their object for long periods of time without slewing the telescope and therefore the secondary was not being updated for elevation or temperature changes. At 0330, the third observer remarked that doing a sync had no effect for DIS. I reinitalized the instrument, did the requested binning and windowing then returned to the user. A sync, did load the correct information into Remark thereafter. Most likely a problem caused from using DIS with both hubs tonight (first old hub, then new hub, then old hub). This was corrected in less than 5 minutes so downtime was counted. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- UW03 D T/S 19:40 19:50 Serial Port of Guider ICC locked up. UW03 D T/S --:-- --:-- Switch TUI-Remark needed 'dis init' ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:16 dis-slit 0(1086) 116 55 5.2/6.1 3 9 - 1.0 18:23 NA2gdr 4000(48000) 118 57 5.5/6.0 5 7 R 0.73 02:24 dis-slit 0(1067) 13 75 7.4/6.5 177 5 - 0.89 -------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 42 0 8 349 (NNW) 233 mstly cldy cirrus 17:01 41 -4 4 355 (N) 84 mstly cldy cirrus 18:01 41 -2 9 26 (NNE) 80 mstly cldy cirrus 19:01 39 -1 11 31 (NNE) 77 mstly cldy cirrus 20:01 42 0 6 51 (NE) 57 mstly cldy cirrus 21:01 42 0 7 17 (NNE) 58 mstly cldy cirrus 22:01 46 1 10 44 (NE) 54 mstly cldy cirrus 23:01 46 1 2 166 (SSE) 36 mstly cldy cirrus 00:01 46 2 3 153 (SSE) 46 mstly cldy cirrus 01:01 46 1 6 174 (S) 47 mstly cldy cirrus 02:01 45 0 11 145 (SE) 53 mstly cldy cirrus 03:01 45 -1 7 143 (SE) 53 mstly cldy cirrus 04:01 43 -1 10 127 (SE) 51 mstly cldy cirrus 05:01 44 -1 12 145 (SE) 34 mstly cldy cirrus 06:01 41 0 11 128 (SE) 48 mstly cldy cirrus 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-0.77