From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20040218 Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 05:55:27 -0700 (MST) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, February 18, 2004 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- J.Holtzman J.Holtzman DIS 18:35 23:45 P.Yoachim P.Yoachim DIS 00:15 03:27 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- NM03/R 18:45 00:15 0 0 0 0 5.5 0 0 0 0 UW01/R 00:15 05:49 2.4 0 0 0 3.2 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: J.Barentine The half began with mostly cloudy skies toward sunset and a burgeoning guider problem; on its own, the NA2 guider camera temperature had wandered up to -15 C from the -25 C setpoint. This caused images with horizontal stripes of varying levels and resulted in failures of attempted focus sweeps. Craig looked at the problem for a bit, and after a reboot of the machine and an attempted -10 C setpoint, we recovered sufficiently to focus and guide. The remainder of the half was quiet with passing waves of moderately thick cirrus. Winds picked up late and were bumping up toward the closure limit around 23:00. I let Holtz continue through until 23:45 when he had agreed to give up early to enable a grating change for the second-half program. In this time the skies cleared significantly. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Gusts were near the limit but not over at the beginning of second half, so we proceeded with a grating change. Shortly after the second half observer had gotten started, I noticed that the telescope temperatures were flatlined since midafternoon, and I called Craig to fix them. That caused a focus discontinuity, but I was able to compensate for it. Seeing was quite poor in any case, so the momentary disruption wasn't too bad. I let one high wind gust go by because it was somewhat isolated and the dataq showed no effect on the primary mirror. The next high gust, about half an hour later, did produce some primary oscillations, and I guessed it was the start of a trend, so I closed at about 03:30. With wind gusts getting up over 50 mph, we never re-opened. ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:37 DISslit -50(1167) 170 69 7.4/10.2 205 19 - 0.95 18:56 NA2gdr -4053(42946)295 38 7.6/10.2 210 23 R 1.05 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 48 13 19 235 (SW) MstlyCldy none 17:01 46 12 19 210 (SSW) MstlyCldy none 18:01 45 10 21 210 (SSW) MstlyCldy none 19:01 46 8 21 212 (SSW) MstlyCldy none 20:01 46 7 24 212 (SSW) MstlyCldy none 21:01 45 10 19 201 (SSW) MstlyCldy none 22:01 46 11 20 203 (SSW) MstlyCldy none 23:01 45 10 21 200 (SSW) PtlyCldy none 00:01 45 10 27 200 (SSW) mstly clr none 01:01 44 10 23 199 (SSW) mstly clr none 02:01 43 9 25 207 (SSW) mstly clr none 03:01 42 5 25 222 (SW) clear none 04:01 41 6 35 227 (SW) clear none 05:01 40 5 27 219 (SW) ptly cldy 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. Note: The weather tower dust counter is out of commision TELESCOPE STATUS Telescope drives operational. Current Remark version: 2.85b Current guide software version: guider v4.1b4 Current TCC version: 2.7.2 Current TUI version: TUI-0.83