Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20051020 Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 07:15:21 -0600 (MDT) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu (Bill Ketzeback) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, October 20, 2005 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Klaene B.Ketzeback NA2GDR 19:15 22:20 SPICAM 22:20 00:00 DIS 00:00 01:25 T.Murphy APOLLO 01:25 03:20 ECHELLE 03:20 04:20 APOLLO 05:00 06:30 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EN01/W 19:18 06:18 0 0 0 0 1.3 9.8 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback Murphy (not Tom) was working over time tonight. It seemed everything I tried to do tonight resulted in something breaking or going wrong. The plan was to first check instrument blocks and then do a pointing model now that the na2 rotator was back together. When I tried to login to Spicam's icc at sunset it was dead. I called Fritz and he agreed to return to the site to look into it. However he had me try somethings first that led to my inadvertantly crashing galileo, one of the sites main name servers. This caused all sorts of problems, including bringing the 2.5m to its knees. I did get galileo back up and running before Fritz arrived to work on dryrot. In the meantime, I noticed weird behavior from the na2 guider. I tried several remaps of the guider stage but something was not behaving correctly. With the help of Larry Kerry, Fritz Stauffer and Craig Loomis, we were able to discern that the motor on the stage was stalling and could never reach the fiducal limit switch so the remaps of the stage kept timing out, resulting in the weird behavior. Further inspection showed the lead screw on the stage was bent. I wrote up a PR for the day staff. Things looked grim for a pointiong model already at this point. It seemed I was back on track and was working on a spicam instrument block when at 23:50 near the end of collecting the ring data dryrot once again crashed hard. I decided it was not really worth the time to try to bring it back to life or call Fritz. I then switched to DIS and did an instrument block for it. I then attempted to nudge the guider into a place that I could get a star in focus by using a combination of guider focus and secondary focus. Unfortunately, I could not coax it close enough to a good focus. By this time, the APOLLO folks pointed out that the moon would be too high to be observed between 3am - 5am and they wanted to know if I would give them some time before this. I figured I had enough time to do a pointing model at na1 and perhaps a collimation check between this time so I agreed to it. Therefore at 01:25 we switched over to APOLLO. It took nearly an hour for them to get a good return and then shortly thereafter the laser started having significant dropouts. It was then time to switch over to the echelle for a pointing run. However, after rotating the tertiary and defining the instrument to the echelle I could not find any bright stars. Upon some investigation I noted that the Tertiary Piston, X tilt, Y tilt and A,B,C actuator positions were off enough to account for no stars found. Switching to any non-na1 instrument brought the commanded and actual positions more inline with expected values, however choosing echelle caused the tertiary to be in a weird state. Also while I was fighting with this weird problem, cloud cover started to thicken. This really ended hopes of getting a pointing model for tonight. By 5am I again gave the time to the APOLLO group. No returns were seen during this last hour and a half. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 00:14 DISslit 0(804) 238 55 7.2/6.7 53 8 - 1.22 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 50 32 4 276 (W) clear none 17:01 50 33 3 3 (N) clear none 18:01 48 32 4 6 (N) clear none 19:01 50 9 8 20 (NNE) clear none 20:01 47 14 7 36 (NE) clear none 21:01 46 32 10 62 (ENE) clear none 22:01 45 32 10 71 (ENE) clear none 23:01 44 31 15 59 (ENE) clear none 00:01 45 30 10 70 (ENE) prtly cldy none 01:01 46 27 5 74 (ENE) mstly cldy cirrus 02:01 47 18 0 274 (W) mstly cldy cirrus 03:01 45 27 2 83 (E) mstly cldy cirrus 04:01 47 22 10 52 (NE) mstly cldy med cirrus 05:01 46 24 0 15 (NNE) mstly cldy hvy cirrus 06:01 46 24 9 46 (NE) mstly cldy hvy cirrus 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: 2.7.3.2 Current TUI version: TUI 1.0.1