From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20041218 Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 06:53:57 -0700 (MST) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Saturday, December 18, 2004 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- E.Turner J.Dembicky SPIcam 17:15 23:28 B.Lawton B.Lawton, C.Churchill DIS 00:52 06:15 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PU03/O 17:58 00:00 0 0 0 0.3 0 5.7 0 0 0 NM02/R 00:00 06:03 0 0 0.1 0.6 5.4 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: J.Dembicky I had a small problem with the NA2 guider filter wheel tonight not aligning properly. I re-homed the wheel and the problem was resolved in a few minutes. Seeing was medeocre at the start of the night with the best at around 1.5 arc sec. With this seeing it left few (ie. none) Lens targets until 21:00. I also screwed up the flats by forgetting to turn the truss lamps off (HeNe) when I calibrated DIS earlier in the evening. I decided to use the time to get some biases and also focus the guider and see if the seeing would settle a little more in the interim. I refocused SPIcam after I finished my biases and seeing was just at 1.2 arc sec. I decided to enter this into Chris's page and it popped up one lens that I could bang away at for a while. I decided to do a single dither of 4 images (in 3 colors) and then would refocus and see if the seeing had improved between each cycle. My first "test" image showed the seeing to be around 1.3 arc sec. The temperature was on a rollercoaster tonight (and the seeing along with it). First it would drop a degree or two and then it would climb a degree or two. I would focus with seeing around 1.2 arc sec and during the next hour it would bounce between 1.2 and 2.0 arc sec. Seeing seemed to get worse towards the later part of the 1st half as well. At 23:15 the seeing was jumping to nearly 4 arc sec on the guider and there was little point in trying to observe the lenses. My 2nd half observers also had logged in early, so I decided to abort the SPIcam script and give them the time (and mount DIS). The 2nd half observers started about 20 mins early but we had a problem with DIS (shutter stuck) which was not realized (TUI appeared to be exposing when it actually wasn't) until the exposure finished. Unfortunately it was a 45 minute exposure and we didn't find this out until TUI said the exposure should be finished, but showed it as still integrating (although the counter stopped). I would say it was a combination of a bug with TUI, keeping the counter running, even though it showed a failure on the screen as well. I'll send a note to Russell and Craig. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan I arrived late for second half, missing the shutter drama. The last few hours of the night were fairly peaceful, with moderate to poor seeing. The observers did mention that guiding was rather poor (for a target due west, altitude ~80) even though the field had a perfectly fine guide star. We experimented a little with guiding off versus on, concluded that guiding off seemed a *little* better, but found that guiding did improve once we got to lower altitudes. This could be related to recent adjustments to the guider optics (which will be re-calibrated during engineering time around Christmas), an out-of-date pointing model (always more sensitive near the zenith), or possibly a minor rotator or azimuth problem (the azimuth tracks very slowly in that part of the sky, and the motors don't like moving very slowly). The poor guiding may need some looking into, and we will want to be alert for recurrence, but it wasn't awful; it didn't cost any observing time and only a few photons. There were no apparent cases of low-level noise in tonight's DIS data. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGNDFVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NM02 D I/H 23:45 00:45 DIS shutter stuck ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 17:50 SPIcam -225(775) 31 81 -0.4/2.1 27 6 r' 1.5 18:14 SPIcam -200(797) 358 72 0.5/1.7 356 6 r' 1.15 18:15 NA2gdr -302(36697) 357 72 0.1/1.7 5 7 R 1.07 19:22 SPIcam -125(892) -83 48 -1.3/0.5 6 6 r' 1.19 19:28 NA2gdr -1916(35083) -84 47 -1.1/0.5 20 4 R 1.30 20:28 SPIcam 0(1060) -92 34 0.6/-0.1 54 11 r' 1.1 20:29 NA2gdr -1351(35648) -93 34 0.7/-0.1 53 13 R 1.2 21:32 SPIcam 75(1096) 25 41 1.5/-0.0 55 15 r' 1.2 21:33 NA2gdr -744(36255) 25 42 1.5/-0.0 52 15 R 1.1 22:28 SPIcam 50(1060) 7 45 1.0/0.1 45 10 r' 1.2 22:30 NA2gdr -79(36920) 6 45 1.1/-0.0 53 9 R 1.1 23:33 DISslit -50(727) 73 62 -0.1/-0.3 6 6 none 2.1 23:42 NA2gdr -251(30748) 71 63 0.6/-0.3 272 1 R 1.6 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 35 15 1 237 (WSW) 256 Clear none 17:01 32 6 8 88 (E) 204 Clear none 18:01 32 0 5 13 (NNE) 202 Clear none 19:01 31 0 0 187 (S) 219 Clear none 20:01 32 2 12 42 (NE) 219 Clear none 21:01 33 -4 10 28 (NNE) 213 Clear none 22:01 34 -8 8 38 (NE) 156 Clear none 23:01 33 -7 6 66 (ENE) 158 Clear none 00:01 34 -6 1 86 (E) 195 Clear none 01:01 33 -10 3 89 (E) 196 Clear none 02:01 32 -5 7 155 (SSE) 179 Clear none 03:01 32 -1 6 173 (S) 182 clear none 04:01 32 -2 6 184 (S) 213 clear none 05:01 32 -3 4 201 (SSW) 195 clear none 06:01 33 -1 1 242 (WSW) 183 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