Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 06:17:49 -0700 (MST) From: John Barentine Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20041224 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Friday, December 24, 2004 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- B.Gillespie F.Hearty,J.Walawender, NIC-FPS 16:40 06:00 J.Barentine,S.Beland, C.Loomis (guest stars) INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EN01/O 18:02 06:06 0 0 0 4.0 0 8.1 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Barentine Better weather than last night. We got a good deal of data for about eight and a half hours after sunset. Shortly before 02:00 we began an exposure sequence on the field of GRB041211, to get a second-epoch observation of this object. Three frames into the dither pattern, the exposure sequence abruptly stopped. The "NICFPS Dither" window in the TUI from which the sequence was started showed the "Start" button grayed out; no offsets were being sent to the telescope nor were expose commands being sent to the instrument. Cancelling the exposure sequence with the "Cancel" button did stop the sequence, and the script did issue the final offset back to the nominal field center as if the script had completed successfully. We tried a few obvious tricks to fix the problem (quitting and restarting TUI, checking the status of the NICFPS hub) to no avail. So at that point we reached out and touched someone, in this case, the very gracious Stephane Beland, who by phone (on vacation, we might add...) fixed the problem. It then recurred on the very next attempt at the dither pattern. More gnashing of teeth, etc., occured. Stephane suggested we try a newer version of the dither script, which he kindly emailed to us. We had intermittent success til calling Craig later on, after 05:00. He narrowed the problem down to temporary files we were creating and leaving behind in the destination directory for the images coming down from the instrument. This apparently caused the script to hang. We finally resumed near 06:00, as twilight approached, to verify that the apparent cause of the problem was correct. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGNDFVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- EN01 N I/S 02:05 06:00 NIC-FPS "expose" command in TUI failed ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 17:28 nicfps 340(1029) 184 76 -5.8/-6.5 56 21 2.12um 1.37 00:02 nicfps 400(1236) 278 54 -2.9/-4.2 51 17 Ks 1.31 01:50 nicfps 400(1253) 240 68 -1.6/-3.0 34 16 J 0.76 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 22 -2 15 53 (NE) 129 Clear none 17:01 21 0 22 54 (NE) 121 Clear none 18:01 22 8 22 48 (NE) 83 Clear none 19:01 23 10 18 61 (ENE) 81 Clear none 20:01 23 10 31 59 (ENE) 90 Clear none 21:01 24 10 15 31 (NNE) 53 Clear none 22:01 25 9 29 60 (ENE) 54 Clear none 23:01 26 8 21 52 (NE) 54 Clear none 00:01 27 6 23 55 (NE) 83 Clear none 01:01 28 5 22 45 (NE) 69 Clear none 02:01 29 5 17 31 (NNE) 73 Clear none 03:01 29 5 12 19 (NNE) 64 Clear none 04:01 30 4 16 25 (NNE) 69 Clear none 05:01 30 3 17 24 (NNE) 65 Clear none 06:01 30 3 16 26 (NNE) 70 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