Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20030928 Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 06:27:17 -0600 (MDT) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu (Bill Ketzeback) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Sunday, September 28, 2003 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- E.Ellingson E.Ellingson,A.Hicks, DIS-high 19:30 06:30 S.Fawcett INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- CU01/O 19:45 06:03 0 0 0 0 9.3 1.0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: W.Ketzeback One of those frustrating nights. Evening checkout went a bit slower than ususal. Not because a tour to the onsite observers was incorporated at the same time but because DIS grating calibrations misbehaved. The observer had requested setups for both bay 1 and bay 2 grating pairs. I had to finally give up on the bay 1 calibrations because they were taking just too long. Bay 2 took a few iterations as well but I finally was to get them properly calibrated. Luckily enough the observers never did get to their backup program which required the high res pair. Some difficulty was seen during checkout with the NA2 Guider. The last few nights the ICC is found frozen in the afternoon and requires one or more reboots/ power cycles to get it to behave. The wind was moderate and from the south paralleling the ridgeline, attributing to horrific seeing conditions all night. Large and variable conditions made it difficult to maintain focus and keep the object at times on the slit. Guiding behaved however except for the first object of the evening which was not suprising as the observers chased it to 3.5 airmasses. Skies remained clear and appeared photometric however, the sky transparency may not have been as good as the cloud camera still image and statistics were reporting. Evidence that there may have been a uniform thin cirrus blanketing the region was evident on the cloud camera movies. Nothing could determined by satellite imaging. The observers seemed to be successful doing blind offsets to rather faint objects but were rather perturbed that the pointing was not to their satisfaction (but they did not tell me this until the end of the night when there wasnt anything I could have done about it). An additional itermittent problem was seen/ confirmed with the DIS red camera tonight and a problem report was filed. ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:03 dis-slt -25(1152) -81 30 13.8/16.2 179 13 - 2.12 20:08 NA2gdr 17(41017) -81 29 14.0/16.1 178 15 clear 2.14 21:14 dis-slt 60(1006) 128 68 12.3/14.1 156 17 - 1.83 21:18 NA2gdr 250(41250) 130 68 12.3/14.0 174 15 clear 1.74 -------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 61 41 6 199 (SSW) 296 clear none 17:01 65 42 7 245 (WSW) 306 clear none 18:01 62 42 7 197 (SSW) 245 clear none 19:01 58 41 8 182 (S) 303 clear none 20:01 57 43 15 176 (S) 315 clear none 21:01 55 44 15 151 (SSE) 353 clear none 22:01 54 44 14 176 (S) 357 clear none 23:01 54 43 14 160 (SSE) 348 clear none 00:01 56 41 14 180 (S) 416 clear none 01:01 56 43 15 211 (SSW) 341 clear none 02:01 54 43 13 206 (SSW) 328 clear none 03:01 54 43 14 183 (S) 288 clear none 04:01 53 43 15 197 (SSW) 230 clear none 05:01 52 43 11 189 (S) 276 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: 2.7.1 Current TUI version: TUI-0.67+