From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3,5m Night Log 20040825 Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 06:22:29 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, August 25, 2004 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- B.Gillespie R.McMillan,B.Ketzeback, DIS,Na2gdr,SH, 20:20 06:00 J.Barentine,C.Loomis Fastcam,SPIcam INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- EN02/O 20:32 05:39 0 0 0 0 3.3 5.8 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan, B.Ketzeback, J.Barentine Our good weather and at least some of our good luck returned tonight. The skies were photometric all night, with good to moderate seeing. We started out checking various problems recently found with DIS. The red-side image-mode focus anomaly is now gone, and all the various parts of DIS agree on what the focus should be. A spectral tilt noted on the red side has been found to be specific only to the red low grating. The red-side noise problem is still present, but becoming more and more intermittent, which makes it very hard to diagnose. We saw the noise in three of tonight's images, not a high frequency. There is also some question about possible contamination on the blue detector, which we will continue looking into. While investigating all these things, we took a second set of throughput data since there have been some oddities noticed in the throughput data taken on Saturday. Pointing with both instrument and guider was good tonight, and a brief check of collimation looked perfect. After that, we went to Fastcam, did quick adjustments of pointing and focus, and settled down to finding the range in which the camera works well. For reddish (K) stars, reasonable brightnesses are in the range 6.2 - 7.2 magnitudes. We got some data at 50 frames/sec which will be analyzed over the next few days. After that, I switched to SPIcam for some photometry, baffle tests, and continued evaluation of the new guider software (which has behaved perfectly the last couple of nights). ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:35 DISslit -25(1373) 128 58 13.7/0.0 270 10 - 0.98 21:05 NA2gdr -5180(28819)140 62 13.6/0.0 259 11 R 0.94 23:44 S-H -100(1951) 130 59 12.7/0.0 240 9 - 1.4 03:38 SPIcam 25(1561) -13352 13.0/0.0 288 12 R 1.11 03:40 NA2gdr -1457(35542)-13352 13.1/0.0 275 12 R 0.94 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 63 38 12 267 (W) clear none 17:01 65 38 10 266 (W) clear none 18:01 65 39 13 266 (W) clear none 19:01 60 36 17 272 (W) clear none 20:01 57 37 10 272 (W) clear none 21:01 57 38 12 250 (WSW) clear none 22:01 57 37 14 250 (WSW) clear none 23:01 56 36 11 234 (SW) clear none 00:01 55 37 13 242 (WSW) clear none 01:01 56 37 10 267 (W) clear none 02:01 56 34 10 266 (W) clear none 03:01 56 33 9 268 (W) clear none 04:01 55 33 15 267 (W) clear none 05:01 55 35 14 265 (W) clear none 06:01 55 33 17 268 (W) 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 90b2