Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 05:56:54 -0700 (MST) From: Jack Dembicky Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20050326 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Saturday, March 26, 2005 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- P.McGehee P.McGehee, NICFPS 19:15 21:10 G.Stringfellow J.Holtzman P.Lim Echelle 21:10 00:10 G.Wallerstein G.Wallerstein Echelle 00:10 05:55 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NM05/R 19:13 21:10 0 0 0 0 0.2 1.8 0 0 0 NM07/R 21:10 00:10 0 0 0 0.3 0 2.7 0 0 0 UW16/R 00:10 05:05 0 0 0 1.0 0 3.9 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Dembicky We opened just after twilight ended tonight, after the humidity had dropped below closure limits and I was reasonably certain things were going to stay that way. Instrument switch over to the Echelle went smoothly at 21:10. I had my 2nd observer for the night slew to her first target so I could focus. The efocus would not work for me (it would send an expose command down to the TCC and take the first exposure, but it wouldn't continue from there). I decided to just manually focus the Echelle to save time and get my observer on to science. The pointing was also a bit off (star landed in the lower right corner of the guide field (on Remark)). I tried a quick and dirty track/pterr error correction (I know Russet, use the other, but I wanted to get this done quickly since it took me a while to hand focus). track/pterr had the same problem that the efocus routine did, so I couldn't do the pointing correction (I just notified the observer that pointing may be a little off, I later found the Wiki page on how to do the pointing correction but hadn't implemented it). Around 22:20 the observer notified me that the guider seemed to be acting up. It appeared that the guider failed (usual problem that only occurs at night when our Craig is away!) I restarted the guider computer. Still no dice (it was hanging the tcc with a LTA10: port failure for a minute or two when I issued a commanded an exposure thru the tcc) so I rebooted the TCC (and correspondingly the MC). That fixed the problem. At 22:55:12 a slew was rejected (altitude) which I don't know why. I had her re-slew at 22:58:16 and that slew went thru. I didn't see anything different between the two so I don't know what happened here. The telescope was tracking fine at its current location while she was doing this so it didn't appear to be a motor type failure, just a rejection of the command (She was using Remark). We had pointing issues for the 2nd half as well as a finicky guider that started crashing repeatedly around 03:30. I finally ran the guider from here and it seemed to guide fine. I gave the guider back to George after the first exposure he did (10 mins or so) and it ran fine for the remainder of the night. I would say we had a total probably an hour lost to various small problems during the 2nd half. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFNVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NM07 E I/S 22:20 22:35 NA1 guider locked up, UW16 E I/S 03:30 03:50 NA1 guider lockups ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:29 NICFPS -25(1057) 68 61 -3.4/-2.4 5 12 2.2 1.0 21:15 Echelle -50(-178) -179 42 -4.3/-4.3 10 13 ND2 1.4 00:38 Echelle -25(-227) 114 55 -4.3/-4.9 18 15 ND2 2.3 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 24 23 3 287 (WNW) 206 Cloudy Lt. Snow 17:01 27 21 6 1 (N) 118 Cloudy Lt. Snow 18:01 25 22 8 1 (N) 69 Mst. Clr none 19:01 25 17 13 22 (NNE) 53 Clear none 20:01 24 16 13 28 (NNE) 64 Clear none 21:01 24 14 16 33 (NNE) 44 Clear none 22:01 24 13 10 355 (N) 60 Clear none 23:01 24 9 13 26 (NNE) 49 Clear none 00:01 24 12 11 10 (N) 59 Clear none 01:01 25 13 24 21 (NNE) 98 Clear none 02:01 25 14 18 33 (NNE) 61 Clear none 03:01 25 18 18 42 (NE) 94 Clear none 04:01 25 17 27 23 (NNE) 101 Clear none 05:01 25 17 13 15 (NNE) 80 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 0.94