From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20041126 Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 06:58:18 -0700 (MST) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Friday, November 26, 2004 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- D.York D.York DIS 17:30 05:40 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- UC05/R 17:55 00:00 0 0 0 0.2 0 5.9 0 0 0 UC04/R 00:00 05:48 0 0 0 0 0 5.8 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st half Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback Orographic clouds until sunset then skies cleared for remainder of first half. Seeing was moderate to poor. All the DIS red images showed the "banded read-noise" problem again tonight but only after we opened. A report was sent off to Jim Gunn and Peter Doherty as previously directed. At 19:45, there was a problem where the telescope quit tracking. Near as I can tell the time sync difference for one of the axes got too large. I reinitiallized the telescope and had my observer reslew and the problem seemed to get corrected. This happened however in the middle of an exposure so about 5 minutes was lost during recovery. [RM: I later established that the TCC believed a stop button had been pushed, and that caused the halt. Bill could not remember at a distance of several hours whether there was a power flicker to trigger the stop circuit. We might need to be on the lookout for flaky stop circuits.] At 21:00, Don asked me to close the mirror covers so he could take some cals. The eyelid responded to commands in automatic mode but not the covers. I took some additional time to go up to the dome to operate them so Im counting 0.1 hours downtime to this. When Don finished his cals the covers opened properly in automatic mode. 2nd half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Second half went fairly smoothly, with most photometric skies and variable seeing. There were a couple of high wind gusts, but I elected to watch instead of closing, and the wind went down right afterward. The banded noise on DIS continued to appear in most but not all of the red images. It disappeared at the time of the program change, but since it was the same observer and same instrument setup, I don't think anything physically changed. We also saw at least one instance later where the noise disappeared for a few exposures even though no change was made. We had one hard crash of the NA2 guider which required power-cycling the controller -- Sorry, Craig, it's still not fixed yet! But this cost us no observing time, and the telescope tracked well while the guider was off. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- UC05 D T/H 19:45 19:50 Tel stop circuit twitched UC05 D T/H 21:05 21:10 Mirror cover not responding in auto ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:15 dis-slit -180(605) 182 77 -1.2/0.4 313 13 - 1.84 18:17 NA2gdr -1000(30000)184 77 -1.1/0.5 298 14 R 1.6 00:20 DISslit -25(653) 231 54 -2.5/-3.2 27 24 - 1.45 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 33 21 18 267 (W) 656 mstly cldy none 17:01 31 22 17 258 (WSW) 890 clear none 18:01 31 24 9 272 (W) 938 clear none 19:01 30 19 10 318 (NW) 230 clear none 20:01 30 18 14 321 (NW) 240 clear none 21:01 30 13 15 340 (NNW) 198 clear none 22:01 28 18 15 19 (NNE) 187 clear none 23:01 27 19 16 6 (N) 207 clear none 00:01 27 16 17 18 (NNE) 195 clear none 01:01 26 11 20 32 (NNE) 257 clear none 02:01 25 17 11 326 (NW) 214 clear none 03:01 25 17 8 276 (W) 171 clear none 04:01 29 0 10 284 (WNW) 234 clear none 05:01 31 0 11 271 (W) 197 clear none 06:01 31 8 8 289 (WNW) 182 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 TCC version: 2.7.2 Current TUI version: TUI 0.931