From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20050413 Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 06:15:33 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, April 13, 2005 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- J.Bally N.Cunningham,G.Laurent NIC-FPS 19:40 21:33 M.Klaene R.McMillan,C.Loomis EchSV,Na2Gdr,SH 21:40 01:02 A.West A.West DIS,SPIcam 01:05 06:25 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DD03/R 20:27 21:35 0 0 0 0 0 1.1 0 0 0 EN01/R 21:35 01:00 0 0 0 0 0.2 3.2 0 0 0 UW07/R 01:00 05:39 0 0 0 0 4.6 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Tonight had multiple waves of high clouds along with moderate to poor seeing. We started with NIC-FPS, which showed some strange focus behavior (starting high and moving downward rather than the usual reverse), even though the telescope had cooled for a reasonable period of time before the first focus. The guider focus behavior was also extremely odd during the first hour of the night -- so odd that I didn't record any of the values I roughly measured, but they began at -12000 steps and ended at +4000. By the time we switched to the echelle for guiding software work, the strange focus behaviors had leveled out. The echelle work went fairly well, although some results on the closely-connected NA2Gdr software were extremely confusing. Because of the cirrus and limited time, I didn't get any throughput measurements, but I did get a chance to check collimation. It was slightly off, but I elected not to change it due to shortage of time and poor seeing, which made the measurements less accurate. We also used the SH video to make a brief examination of telescope behavior during small uncomputed offsets. When we switched to DIS, there was some difficulty getting the NA2 guider software back to a usable state. This didn't actually cost any of the science time, although it may have reduced efficiency somewhat. We eventually got the guider working almost normally, and the remainder of the night proceeded well. We used all the usable instruments tonight, except GRIM! ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFNVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:57 nicfps 125(1879) 234 35 8.8/10.5 156 14 FeII 1.03 04:42 SPIcam 50(1330) 216 51 7.5/7.2 150 8 Halpha 1.95 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 59 17 15 190 (S) 1133 cirrus none 17:01 58 18 21 181 (S) 1164 cirrus none 18:01 54 18 17 187 (S) 1268 cirrus none 19:01 51 19 14 193 (SSW) 1416 cirrus none 20:01 47 19 13 149 (SSE) 1378 cirrus none 21:01 47 19 16 141 (SE) 1421 mstly clr none 22:01 47 17 18 135 (SE) 1213 cirrus none 23:01 48 18 18 157 (SSE) 1259 cirrus none 00:01 46 20 16 141 (SE) 1401 cirrus none 01:01 47 22 16 153 (SSE) 1551 cirrus none 02:01 46 22 15 153 (SSE) 1652 cirrus none 03:01 46 22 17 150 (SSE) 1801 mstly clr none 04:01 46 21 12 156 (SSE) 1650 cirrus none 05:01 45 22 9 157 (SSE) 1783 cirrus none 06:01 45 22 19 138 (SE) 1959 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