Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 05:44:43 -0700 (MST) From: Jack Dembicky Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20050327 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Sunday, March 27, 2005 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- J.Lutz J.Lutz Echelle 20:44 00:00 G.Wallerstein G.Wallerstein Echelle 00:00 05:30 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UW18/R 19:14 00:10 0 0 1.2 0.8 0 2.9 0 0 0 UW16/R 00:10 05:03 0 0 0 1.5 0 3.4 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Dembicky I had the enclosure open around 16:00 tonight to start cooling. I wanted to be up and running in twilight to check some fixes Craig had me do this afternoon and I needed to fix the pointing problem we had last night too. Russet said it would only take about 2 mins to do that, so I wanted to use the twilight to get all of this accomplished. Things don't always go as planned. The fix Craig had me do worked fine. I could once again use the efocus (and echpoint to hopefully fix the pointing). One task down, one two minute task to go. I did what Russet told me but in the middle of it my observer accidently slewed the telescope on me. Hopefully it didn't hurt anything (Russet told me later that it shouldn't have at the step I happend to be at. When the observer slewed the telescope I hit the stop button to kill the drives. Not the most graceful way to stop a telescope but I was not expecting it to start slewing on me in the middle of what I was working on. This of course cause a building stop button to engage and I had to go reset that on the intermediate level before I could slew back to the position I was originally at. I finished up what I was doing to fix the pointing and then took an slitview image. No stars to be seen, bad pointing (even worse than yesterday!) and I am not sure if it was the accidental slew causing the problems or what I "fixed" just made things worse. Well, long story short, 2 1/2 hrs later we (I got hold of Russet for advice, but mostly had it figured out by the time she called back, then she found the other problem which was the actual cause of the bad pointing in the first place) finally had the pointing fixed (luckily I started this process in early twilight!). We found a couple errors, from the engineering work done a couple days ago, that were causing the problem. Things ran smoothly with no problems until around 23:30 when the guider failed, then the Echelle would not transfer it's image to the MC (I had a work-a-round already from Craig in case this happened and I recovered the data). This series of problems process took about 30 mins to fix. Things ran smoothly again until about 01:30 when again, guider failed a couple times, then the observer reported that the status window said sending image to MC......, which I assumed the Echelle ICC was stuck again, and rebooted. This took oh 30 mins or so to fix with a couple reboots. I later found out that no data was taken, but I had salvaged what was in the Echelle buffer already anyway. Then suddenly at 03:47:19 MC node died unexpectedly. The Echelle also stopped sending image to MC (so I did the salvage thing before restarting that). Then I tried just restarting the MC, no dice. I then did a telstop/telrun and restarted the MC (Also then noted that something had halted the drive motors as well, but that may have been the telstop/telrun? I am not sure). I then did a slew to make sure the drives were working fine. They were (or so I thought). Next I proceeded to take an Echelle exposure that worked, and while it was reading out I told George to go ahead and slew back to his star. Telescope wouldn't move now. I noticed that the axis were halted (strange since I didn't do that but I had an idea what might have happened). I did an axis stop and crash button. dis-engaged the crash button and didn't hear the motors engage. Up to the intermediate level and yup, building stop button engaged (actually still pressed in and I had to physically move the telescope away from the building!). Checked the drive controller box below the staircase and sure enough the left set of green LEDs, only one was lit. Reset that box, dis-engage the building stop button, go downstairs and do a couple test slews to make sure things were again happy with the telescope (they were this time). Oh and whatever the problem was that killed the MC also took out the cloud camera computer and it needed to be restarted (the cloudcamera, not the computer). I had George then slew back to his star so I could check the pointing, seemed OK, not centered but close enough. I then gave control back to George and he had problems with his shift-click, I recommended he restart his Remark, as things seemed to work on my end. I moved his star in the center of the slit for him and he decided to go ahead and take an spectra. That pretty much rounded out the night. Good thing it was nearing twilight, I think we were maxing out on our problem quota for the night. It was a LONG night! ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFNVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- UW18 O T/S 18:30 20:45 Fixed pointing problem UW18 E I/S 23:30 00:00 Gdr died, Ech img not sent UW16 E I/S 01:30 02:00 Gdr died, Ech img not sent UW16 O T/S 03:47 04:47 MC crashed ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:34 Echelle -8(70) 16 77 2.2/2.6 341 11 ND1 1.4 20:36 Echelle 105(355) -36 32 4.6/3.0 57 4 ND2 1.3 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 36 16 2 297 (WNW) 116 Clear none 17:01 37 14 9 339 (NNW) 95 Clear none 18:01 38 2 14 6 (N) 74 Clear none 19:01 38 11 13 355 (N) 92 Clear none 20:01 40 10 8 2 (N) 79 Cirrus none 21:01 41 10 10 341 (NNW) 91 Cirrus none 22:01 43 9 15 7 (N) 111 Cirrus none 23:01 41 9 9 2 (N) 101 Cirrus none 00:01 42 11 5 346 (NNW) 107 Cirrus none 01:01 42 11 8 350 (N) 111 Cirrus none 02:01 41 14 11 335 (NNW) 109 Cirrus none 03:01 41 17 16 321 (NW) 149 Cirrus none 04:01 40 18 7 282 (WNW) 175 Cirrus none 05:01 41 15 12 323 (NW) 175 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: 2.7.2 Current TUI version: TUI 0.94