Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 05:49:42 -0600 (MDT) From: John Barentine Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20030612 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, June 12, 2003 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- B.Gillespie J.Barentine,R.McMillan SPIcam 20:20 21:00 NA2gdr 21:05 23:35 S-H 23:40 00:15 Echelle 00:20 01:10 SPIcam 03:10 04:55 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- EN01/0 21:15 04:51 0 0 0 0 0 7.6 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Barentine Started some SPIcam sky flats after opening shortly after 20:00. Once it was properly dark, we began an 8x10 pointing model. After that we conducted a test of tracking and offsetting objects moving relatively fast (medium Earth-orbit satellites) with reasonable success. Shack-Hartman for about half an hour, and then a correction to the pointing at NA1. After that Russet and I walked through a series of tests with measuring motion of images under various tertiary moves at low and high elevations to enable the writing of software to help with tertiary positioning. It quickly became evident, however, that something was awry since the requested moves did not seem to correlate with the expected amount of motion in the guider images. See Russet's PR 2003091 for full details. After a couple of hours of analysing the situation, she decided that the health and safety of the telescope would not be jeopardized by continuint to run it, so I fired things up again. Toward 03:00 I tried another test to acquire Tom's satellite with minimal success, but since we did not make the decision to try until well into the satellite's path, I was only able to follow it for about 30 minutes. Not much else to do given the poor pointing of the scope, but I did get some SPIcam images of M57 in BVR to make a nice publicity image from. ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 00:00 S-H -80(1479) 28 60 13.5/13.3 275 13 - 1.0 04:52 NA2gdr 2270(51270) 280 61 11.6/11.6 359 2 R 1.05 --------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 68 23 17 236 (SW) 515 Clear none 17:01 70 24 18 264 (W) 575 Clear none 18:01 63 18 16 268 (W) 702 Clear none 19:01 62 18 17 256 (WSW) 536 Clear none 20:01 59 18 19 268 (W) 701 Clear none 21:01 57 18 18 270 (W) 695 Clear none 22:01 57 19 14 273 (W) 587 Clear none 23:01 57 18 13 277 (W) 596 Clear none 00:01 56 17 14 286 (WNW) 603 Clear none 01:01 56 18 15 287 (WNW) 637 Clear none 02:01 55 18 8 267 (W) 569 Clear none 03:01 54 18 10 277 (W) 591 Clear none 04:01 54 18 9 300 (WNW) 580 Clear none 05:01 53 18 4 315 (NW) 746 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 Primary, secondary, and tertiary mirrors in place and collimated. Primary support system operational. Mirror ventilation system in place. Telescope drives operational. Current Remark version: 2.85b Current guide software version: GIm Ctrlv4.1b4 Current TCC version: 2.6.8 Current TUI version: 0.66