From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20050715 Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 06:08:41 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Friday, July 15, 2005 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- G.Stringfellow G.Stringfellow Echelle 20:10 00:15 D.York D.York DIS 04:25 05:25 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CU05/R 21:14 01:00 0 0 0 0 0 3.8 0 0 0 UC05/R 01:00 05:05 3.1 0.3 0 0 0.7 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan The evening started out looking good, with hardly any rainclouds to dissipate. By twilight it was near-photometric, with just some kind of haze lingering around. But the first focus had 2 arcsecond seeing, and from there it went downhill. Wind strengthened, high clouds moved in, and the seeing went up to 4 arcsec or worse by midnight. I closed after midnight due to high humidity; I might have pushed it a little if we were getting any photons, but the guide software wouldn't even recognize the stars in most images. The humidity went over the limit with the help of a strong east wind. Then the wind dropped and shifted around to the west; humidity stayed above the limit. Then the wind came back around to the east and strengthened again, and the humidity dropped. Go figure -- summer weather is just weird. We opened after 04:00, and I had a little trouble with the mirror covers -- the NA1 petal wouldn't move on the first try (with the telescope at 80 degrees for tertiary rotation), but it worked on the second try in automatic mode. Seeing was a little better but still mediocre. We had some trouble with the DIS slitviewer images not updating properly, but otherwise everything went well until about 05:15, when the slitviewer started returning images that were all zero. I was unable to reinitialize it through TUI, but I got it going with the old slitview program long enough to get one last standard before we called it a night. ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 21:29 Echelle* 100(541) -52 58 16.2/17.1 74 23 ND2 1.89 04:28 DISslit* 25(1098) 230 61 13.2/13.3 45 9 - 1.8 04:32 NA2gdr -160(22839) 232 60 13.3/13.4 43 12 Clear 1.45 * Secondary zeropoint was changed during the day ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 73 44 4 86 (E) 623 ptly cldy none 17:01 71 44 16 79 (ENE) 715 ptly cldy none 18:01 70 40 8 82 (E) 564 ptly cldy none 19:01 69 38 17 57 (NE) 536 mstly clr none 20:01 65 42 20 77 (ENE) 631 clear haze 21:01 62 46 25 71 (ENE) 773 clear haze 22:01 61 49 23 74 (ENE) 925 mstly clr none 23:01 59 50 24 72 (ENE) 814 mstly clr none 00:01 57 51 24 64 (ENE) 868 ptly cldy humid 01:01 55 52 28 73 (ENE) 852 ptly cldy humid 02:01 54 51 6 162 (SSE) 973 ptly cldy humid 03:01 54 50 20 67 (ENE) 806 ptly cldy humid 04:01 57 47 13 38 (NE) 795 ptly cldy none 05:01 57 47 9 45 (NE) 810 mstly clr 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 1.0b2