From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20051101 Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 05:57:58 -0700 (MST) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Tuesday, November 1, 2005 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- G.Stringfellow G.Stringfellow SPIcam 17:15 00:51 J.Frieman R.McMillan DIS 00:05 05:40 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DD05/R 18:07 23:55 0 0 0 0 5.8 0 0 0 0 UC01/W 23:55 05:27 0 0 0 0 5.5 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan First half was again mostly photometric, and again there was some image elongation in the azimuth direction, especially in the NE and SW parts of the sky. Guiding mitigated the effect but didn't eliminate it. Later in the evening a few very small, high clouds wandered by. These thickened to more significant cirrus coverage after 01:00. Oddly, when I focused DIS the images seemed to be elongated in the altitude direction instead, which really baffled me. I finally decided it was airmass (I was focusing at about 1.8, which shouldn't distort the image THAT much), and just did the best I could. The SN program targets were all setting by 05:00, so I took the time to switch to the Shack-Hartmann and get some video of what the images were doing. As I had suspected, the motion was on a short timescale (period about 2s), mostly in the azimuth direction. It corresponded with the ripples seen on the azimuth motor current dataq, but that may have been a coincidence; similar ripples on the alt motor current were not producing any visible motion. I played with the PID tuning parameters for the azimuth, without getting much improvement in the motion. I figured out how to make it worse, but the opposite change didn't make it better. With twilight setting in, I finally settled on a moderate change (PE.RATE up from 0.05 to 0.2, a reversion to pre-August values) that I knew would cause no harm, and that seemed to make a slight improvement. Tomorrow night we'll see if it actually helps image quality at all. ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:18 SPIcam -50(1064) 48 69 8.9/11.3 198 2 Halpha0.71 00:30 DISslit 25(1059) 247 23 9.4/8.5 262 6 - 1.5 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 50 27 2 218 (SW) 1014 clear none 17:01 52 17 0 210 (SSW) 632 clear none 18:01 49 8 1 205 (SSW) 405 clear none 19:01 48 7 2 226 (SW) 383 clear none 20:01 47 9 5 220 (SW) 383 clear none 21:01 51 8 8 260 (W) 51 mstly clr none 22:01 50 6 7 237 (WSW) 169 mstly clr none 23:01 50 3 7 247 (WSW) 260 mstly clr none 00:01 49 -1 6 248 (WSW) 540 mstly clr none 01:01 49 -6 7 261 (W) 638 mstly clr none 02:01 48 -10 7 242 (WSW) 684 mstly clr none 03:01 48 -13 7 267 (W) 678 cirrus none 04:01 48 5 9 265 (W) 987 cirrus none 05:01 47 12 14 298 (WNW) 1170 cirrus 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: 2.7.3.2 Current TUI version: TUI 1.1