From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20041210 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:25:22 -0700 (MST) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Friday, December 10, 2004 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- E.Turner J.Barentine SPIcam 17:15 20:05 21:45 22:50 G.Williger G.Williger Echelle 20:10 23:25 B.Woodgate B.Woodgate,C.Grady, GFP 00:05 06:50 G.Williger INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PU03/O 17:55 00:00 0 0 0.5 0 5.6 0 0 0 0 DD02/O 00:00 05:58 0 0 0 0 6.0 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: J.Barentine Open again today shortly before sunset to begin cooling and then to take SPICam twilight flats thereafter. At the end of twilight, seeing was initially excellent -- I measured 0.54 arcseconds FWHM in SDSS r' -- but then focus began to slide as telescope parts equilibrated. I chased focus but by a half-hour after the end of twilight, the seeing itself was varying wildly from subarcsecond to beyond 2 arcseconds on a timescale of several seconds of time. I ran the lens program for about an hour until two circumstances conspired to bring that to a halt: the variable, often poor seeing and a lack of observable targets until after 21:00. I offered the interim time to the on-site observers from Goddard, who gladly took the opportunity to get some needed echelle spectra. I switched back to SPIcam at 21:45 hoping to pick up where I left off with the lenses. The seeing continued its rollercoaster ride and averaged between 1.75-2 arcsec -- too high to observe any of our lenses. While I waited to see what it would do over the next 45 minutes or so, I used SPIcam to get some needed images of standard stars for NIC-FPS cross-calibration purposes. Shortly before 23:00, it was clear we were not going to get any additional lens observations for the night, so I ceded the remainder of the time back to Gerry for further Echelle use. He decided to hand over to GFP at about 23:20. No problems to report tonight. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Second half was more productive and also more exciting. There was some trouble with the GFP camera controller during darks taken first half. It needed to be reset several times, so even though the first-half observations finished more than half an hour early, we didn't get going on the sky until several minutes after midnight. When we finally focused, we found the seeing much improved. This was nice, except that it made us much more sensitive to small focus variations. There was a moderately large focus shift midway through first half when the air temperature dropped out of the tropical range, and that proved hard to deal with. At 0500 there was a crash of the NA2 guider requiring a power cycle, in the middle of a 45m exposure. I recommended reading that exposure out and starting a new one, but it turned out the shortened exposure was quite usable, so effectively no time was lost. While I was on the intermediate level power-cycling the guider, I noticed that NIC-FPS (recently pumped and cooled) was just beginning to warm. So as soon as we got the guider back I went up to the dome for an emergency fill. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFNVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- DD02 N I/H 23:30 00:00 GFP camera needed resets DD02 N T/S --:-- --:-- NA2gdr hard reset ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:00 NA2gdr -600(36400) 83 77 5.4/7.6 10 13 R 0.66 18:00 SPIcam 135(1381) 83 77 5.4/7.6 10 13 r' 0.54 18:30 SPIcam 75(1327) 244 65 5.2/7.3 358 10 r' 0.86 18:33 NA2gdr 905(37905) 245 64 4.9/7.2 17 10 R 0.83 20:18 Echelle 57(311) 132 78 7.7/6.8 4 10 ND1 0.90 22:59 Echelle 78(337) 67 79 8.2/6.8 341 13 ND2 1.00 00:21 gfp 75(1312) -113 75 8.3/7.4 326 7 6717 0.75 00:22 NA2gdr 775(33775) -113 75 8.3/7.4 326 7 R 0.92 03:35 gfp -50(1333) 133 40 8.3/8.2 304 12 8325 0.74 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 46 11 4 291 (WNW) 177 Clear none 17:01 42 12 10 1 (N) 189 Clear none 18:01 42 6 9 20 (NNE) 155 Clear none 19:01 44 8 11 10 (N) 126 Clear none 20:01 46 3 6 4 (N) 137 Clear none 21:01 45 10 11 3 (N) 158 Clear none 22:01 44 9 5 349 (NNW) 70 Clear none 23:01 47 5 13 345 (NNW) 53 Clear none 00:01 47 1 8 332 (NNW) 26 clear none 01:01 48 -1 11 323 (NW) 22 clear none 02:01 49 -2 12 316 (NW) 22 clear none 03:01 48 -3 9 297 (WNW) 24 clear none 04:01 47 0 11 325 (NW) 15 clear none 05:01 46 1 13 316 (NW) 25 clear none 06:01 46 1 16 324 (NW) 12 clear none 07:01 47 -2 11 341 (NNW) 11 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