From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20030625 Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 06:17:28 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, June 25, 2003 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- P.Szkody O.Fraser,P.Szkody DIS 20:15 04:15 E.Turner R.McMillan SPIcam 04:31 05:15 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- UW06/R 21:19 04:23 0 0 0.1 0 6.1 0.8 0 0 0 PU04/O 04:23 04:53 0 0 0 0 0 0.5 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Weather tonight was fair, with clear skies first half and moderate cirrus second half. We also had some exceptionally good seeing -- 0.8 arcseconds with the DIS slitviewer (our worst-seeing instrument), and as low as 0.55 with the NA2 guider. I had to rebin the guider from 3x3 to 2x2 to make it work, and I even considered binning 1x1! Later in the night, seeing became more moderate -- it was hard to be sure since some target fields had no stars to measure, and a motor problem distorted some images for a little while. There was a delay in getting started when we couldn't seem to get a spectrum of a standard, even though DIS was evidently seeing the sky. It turned out to be a mistake in the observers' choice of windowing parameters, which I failed to catch at the time. Once the observations got going, everything went smoothly until around 03:00, when the observer reported smeared images. I realized that the problem had something to do with the azimuth motors. We were in a part of the sky (NW) where the azimuth tracks extremely slowly, and the motors don't do as well at slow speeds. I checked the azimuth drive disk for moth guts and found nothing, but I decided to try moving the telescope around a little. I made a 120-degree azimuth slew, then had the observer slew back to the target. This time, although the tracking speed was just the same, the azimuth readouts looked more normal. The image elongation went away, and observations continued normally until dawn. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- UW06 D T/H 03:23 03:27 az motors trouble tracking slowly ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 21:13 dis-slit -150(1123) 260 75 18.9/20.9 266 6 - 0.84 21:16 NA2gdr 2924(43924) 261 75 18.9/20.6 262 6 R 0.68 04:37 SPIcam -40(1338) 156 58 17.7/16.9 259 9 r' 0.93 --------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 79 5 2 256 (WSW) 314 clear none 17:01 76 12 6 228 (SW) 364 clear none 18:01 77 16 7 242 (WSW) 413 clear none 19:01 71 14 7 268 (W) 408 clear none 20:01 68 12 5 279 (W) 492 clear none 21:01 66 10 5 269 (W) 491 clear none 22:01 65 9 6 250 (WSW) 538 clear none 23:01 65 11 9 236 (SW) 582 clear none 00:01 64 10 9 266 (W) 574 clear none 01:01 64 9 7 267 (W) 623 clear none 02:01 63 9 8 236 (SW) 615 mstly clr none 03:01 63 10 9 210 (SSW) 650 cirrus none 04:01 63 12 5 258 (WSW) 1653 cirrus none 05:01 64 11 10 256 (WSW) 825 cirrus none 06:01 63 12 5 183 (S) 985 cirrus 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: 2.7.0 Current TUI version: 0.67