Date: Sun, 22 May 2005 05:57:27 -0600 (MDT) From: Jack Dembicky Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20050521 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Saturday, May 21, 2005 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- F.Hearty F.Hearty, Quyen NICFPS 18:30 01:00 G.Wallerstein V.Woolf Echelle 01:00 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CU04/R 21:00 01:00 0 0 0 0 0 4.0 0 0 0 UW12/R 01:00 05:00 0 0 0 0 0.1 3.9 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Dembicky We had some high backgrounds (55k) with NICFPS this evening in Ks (3.3s). The mask backgrounds looked normal (12K). I told this to Fred and we didn't think the wheels were mis-aligned. Around 22:00ish Fred reported that the filters seemed mis-aligned because of saturation in Ks and H. I ran Stephanes routine for aligning all the wheels in NICFPS but that didn't seem to fix the high background/saturation problem. I checked the stepper motor position values and they seemed to be in agreement with what TUI was reporting (and the mask gave us a low background as expected). It may have been due to the 20C temp outside and inside the dome? We weren't sure but since Fred was doing the observations he knows what was going on. (see end of night experiment at end of this section) We switched over to the Echelle at 01:00 and I quickly focused and had the instrument in the 2nd half observers hands. Seeing was around 1.5 arc sec. at the start of the 2nd half. The slitviewer crashed about 20 mins afterI handed the instrument over. At 03:55 the remote observers computer crashed with the following message: Msg#104 Errof from class WORDCOL::Error #137 My list is full. After rebooting his Mac, the guider was acting funny. It would keep drifting the star to the lower left of the slit and then move it back. After a couple of minutes of this (and some large offset errors, while increasing the guide exp time to 20 sec) he decided to just hand guide. It was a dim star but it did have wings for the autoguider to guide off in the 20 sec exposure, maybe just not enough? At the end of the night I took the following images for Fred H. Outside temp 16.7C - 17.1C (it changed between exposures) Exposure 3.3s Instrument mounted, eyelid closed mask.0004.fits (bkgnd: 12k) Ks.0005.fits (bkgnd: 37k) mask.0006.fits (bkgnd: 12k) J.0007.fits (bkgnd: 12k) H.0008.fits (bkgnd: 12k) Ks.0009.fits (bkgnd: 37k) mask.0010.fits (bkgnd: 12k) These should be compared to the images taken at the start of the night (Mask/Ks/Mask) as, also 3.3s exposures temp was about 22C outside, instrument not mounted, coverplate on: ntest050522.0001 - Mask (bkgnd: 12k) ntest050522.0002 - Ks (bkgnd: 57k) ntest050522.0003 - Mask (bkgnd: 12k) I then took the instrument off the telescope, covered with it's cover, 3.3 second exposure, outside air 16.5C (for direct comparison to the same setup as the ntest exposures, other than I just filled the instrument) mask.0011 (bkgnd: 12k) J.0012 (bkgnd: 12k) H.0013 (bkgnd: 12k) Ks.0014 (bkgnd: 38k) mask.0015 (bkgnd: 12k) Fred did not feel that there was a filter wheel problem at 22:00 after and it looks like Ks is affected by outside air temps (perhaps not too suprising since we are looking at a cover at room temp) as can be seen from the above experiment. Normal (well at approx 5C) backgrounds for Ks are usually 22k. All of the images can be found in /export/images/Q2APO/UT050522 ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:42 NICFPS 150(2344) 45 73 20.1/21.7 238 2 J 0.7 20:47 NA2gdr 3156(40156) 42 74 20.3/21.8 234 3 R 0.7 22:14 NICFPS 100(2230) -49 45 19.3/20.3 176 7 Ks 0.7 00:12 NICFPS 125(2153) -40 51 17.1/18.7 127 17 J 1.0 01:02 Echelle -5(791) -47 49 16.9/17.7 130 17 ND2 1.5 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 77 31 5 262 (W) 745 Clear none 17:01 77 80 14 303 (WNW) 671 Clear none 18:01 73 78 3 347 (NNW) 586 Clear none 19:01 72 54 8 304 (NW) 543 Clear none 20:01 68 46 4 260 (W) 633 Clear none 21:01 69 47 3 224 (SW) 573 Clear none 22:01 68 47 6 177 (S) 661 Clear none 23:01 67 46 6 170 (S) 612 Clear none 00:01 63 31 16 131 (SE) 731 Clear none 01:01 62 32 10 148 (SSE) 816 Clear none 02:01 61 32 10 164 (SSE) 712 Clear none 03:01 64 31 10 183 (S) 693 Clear none 04:01 64 31 12 185 (S) 727 Clear none 05:01 64 31 10 198 (SSW) 700 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