Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 06:54:41 -0700 (MST) From: John Barentine Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20031230 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Tuesday, December 30, 2003 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- P.Sonnentrucker P.Sonnentrucker Echelle 18:30 22:30 A.Nitta J.Krzesinski, DIS 00:30 06:20 J.Barentine INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- JH05/R 18:04 00:00 0 0.9 0 0.4 0 4.6 0 0 0 NM09/O 00:00 06:07 0 0.5 0 0 5.2 0.4 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback It was an interesting start of the night. I had opened for cooling around 1630 after doing 4 grating changes to prepare for the second half user. When the observer finished cals the clouds were a little too thick to focus but saw some thining within 30 minutes. When I finally went to a focus star it was not clear wether I was not seeing a star due to cloud cover or pointing problems. It turned out that there were some issues with pointing so after focusing I corrected the pointing for the echelle. Then as I was about to verify the pointing correction my Remark session kept crashing. After several attempts to get it to work on our mac I gave up. Then I tried to start Remark on the other mac here in the control room and things did not go smoothly there either. Determined to get the observer on the sky, I then discovered that the echelle guider had also crashed. After correcting that problem I was able to get Remark started on Obs2 with the help of a phone call to Craig. The rest of the night the observer resorted in a photon counting experiment since the clouds were not too thick that they couldnt see the object on the slitviewer but the attenuation was pretty high to get much useful science with the echelle. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: J.Barentine While we waited out clouds early in the half, Jurek took some cals. About the time he finished taking flats, the soup overhead had cleared sufficiently to allow science observations to begin. We observed through clouds of increasing thickness as the half progressed, though we elected to stay open as there was no indication of precipitation in the region on local radar. Toward the very end of the half the cloud thickness was such that the NA2 guider failed to keep up with 60 second unfiltered exposures. Seeing also took something of a dive in the latter part of second half as the wind direction shifted more toward SW from W. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- JH05 E T/S 18:45 19:00 Remark on Obs1 repeatedly crashed JH05 E I/S 19:00 19:05 Guider software crashed JH05 E T/S --:-- --:-- Remark on Obs2 would not start ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:43 Echelle 19(137) 203 73 2.3/2.1 288 13 nd2 1.06 02:03 DISslit 50(1003) 25 58 2.3/2.2 200 5 - 1.63 02:08 NA2gdr 1742(48742) 24 59 2.9/2.2 221 8 clear 1.61 -------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 38 -10 9 272 (W) 94 cloudy cirrus 17:01 35 -11 9 285 (WNW) 94 cloudy cirrus 18:01 36 -10 12 278 (W) 4 cloudy cirrus 19:01 36 -10 10 283 (WNW) 7 mstly cldy none 20:01 39 -8 12 291 (WNW) 5 mstly cldy none 21:01 39 -8 11 287 (WNW) 17 mstly cldy none 22:01 38 -9 11 275 (W) 33 mstly cldy none 23:01 38 -8 3 266 (W) 39 mstly cldy none 00:01 38 -8 7 236 (SW) 66 MstlyCldy none 01:01 38 -9 4 215 (SW) 81 PtlyCldy none 02:01 36 -10 5 205 (SSW) 96 PtlyCldy none 03:01 37 -10 11 181 (S) 151 MstlyCldy none 04:01 37 -9 17 162 (SSE) 301 MstlyCldy none 05:01 38 -9 24 166 (SSE) 632 MstlyCldy none 06:01 39 -7 21 179 (S) 965 PtlyCldy 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-0.80