Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 04:23:23 -0600 (MDT) From: Jack Dembicky Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20050825 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, Aug 25, 2005 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- MKlaene J.Dembicky, J.Davis S-H 19:45 04:10 R.McMillan INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EN03/W 20:32 05:39 0 0 0 0 2.8 6.3 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Dembicky Tonight was our first night on the sky after a 2 week shutdown. Main task was drive tuning tonight, and then the rest of the list Russet sent me. Also look for any other anomolies from coming out of a shutdown. I got the following error while checking DIS temps. The temps were fine when checked manually upstairs. 0 3 w distxt="WARNING: temperature readings are old (2005-08-06T05:26:22Z)" 0 3 i ccdTemps=-111.9,-99.6 The NA2 guide camera didn't seem to connect either (simple fix of restarting it's connection to the hub). There was another error that Russet found earlier in the evening as well, Craig was on it later in the night. The alt and az axis had been already re-mapped by the day staff. I checked the velocity scales for the az and rotator and adjusted appropriate files. for the az I used +/-800 (per Russet) for the vel scale parameter and found the resulting average to be 580.2 For the rot1 I used +/-1200 and +/-500 (per Russet) for the vel scale parameter and found the resulting average to be 276.5 Jon D and I then zero'ed the rotator (1.515 change) and I opened the enclosure. I then excercized the drives and rotator to various positions on the sky (using the tcc, not TUI). Later I did a couple slews with TUI (v1.0, not v1.0.1b since I didn't know how to run it from Jeppe yet, or if it had been installed). I have the latest version installed on my laptop and will test it out later in the night. Russet and I then adjusted the telescope pointing for the S-H (using setmir to adjust the paramterts, Russet made the changes). Jon and I then observed a star at fairly high altitude for drive anomolies. I then moved to a star on the meridian at about 60 deg to now adjust the drive tuning parameters in real time (via TUI). Once I found the appropriate values to stop the star from wobbling, well mostly stop it (see below), I adjusted the parameter files for the az and alt axis. Here are the changes AZIMUTH Orig New 0.12 MC.POS.ERR.SCALE F! 0.04 0.01 MC.POS.INT.SCALE F! n/c 0.2 MC.PE.RATE.SCALE F! 0.09 ALTITUDE Orig 0.02 MC.PE.RATE.SCALE F! 0.1 0.6 MC.POS.ERR.SCALE F! n/c 0.08 MC.POS.INT.SCALE F! n/c There was a very slight wobble in the azimuth direction (maybe 1/4 the star width and fairly random when it happened, not seeing as I could see the star go out of focus due to seeing affects). The alt was more stable but there was also a slight wobble there too (maybe 50% less noticable). The wobbles were small and much improved from the original settings in which the star was oscillating about 2-3 widths (especially in azimuth direction). The telescope had now been open for over 3 hrs so I decided to do my S-H tests, since I had a 7.9 mag star on the S-H already and it was set up for this instrument. I took a set of reference frames and then a set of star frames but something wasn't right. I went back and took another set of reference frames and then noticed that somebody had checked the average reference frames (I don't think this is supposed to be checked, at least the docs didn't read that way but didn't explicitly state it wasn't supposed to be checked). So I started another set of reference frames. After the exposure I took 3 star frames. Seeing was starting to blow up slightly on me and the humidity was on the rise. Image MIR021 was messed up (looked streaked horizontally, I have never seen this before), the other images looked normal. I decided to take another set of 3 and hope I could get them before the humidity got too high. The program then made some complaint about some file not being found. I am not sure what that was all about but eventually it reset itself to read the data we took earlier this month (no idea why). I reset the paths to tonights data and then it read the files fine (error from above went away). Now it complained about 'Unresolved Spots: Threshhold factor for reference frame .097 needs to be increased'. I decided I would ask Russet tommorow for help and instead go to the guider instrument block now. The first images I took with the guider were out of focus and the dougnuts had a rectangular look for some reason (the star was near the edge of the field, but I think our guider is relatively flat, I could be wrong). g0006.fits is an example of what I found. I slewed to a different part of the sky, and a 8.7 mag star with a 10s exposure, and couldn't find it in the guider frame. I did find a faint star and tried to focus on that. The star was elongated in the Alt direction and when out of focus it was squished in the same direction. I am not sure what was going on with the guider optics. I decided to put DIS on and see what the stars looked like with that, in imaging mode since SPIcam was unavailable tonight. When mounting DIS I found (as facing the telescope rotator) the lower left clamp to be very loose for DIS. The others were fine. It clamped but Jon D. needs to adjust. Stars on the DIS slitviewer showed tails when near focus near the sweet spot. I then took an image with DIS and indeed the stars showed a bright edge on one side of the out of focus doughnut (indicating a collimation problem). When I took a NA2 guider image the stars were near flat streaks. (BTW, I was using the new beta version of TUI to take these images). Pointing was off as well with DIS (not unexpected with the collimation out of wack). I slewed to a brighter star (3rd mag) to try to figure out if I was close. When I moved the slit back to the 1.5 arc sec slit I got 2 slits in the image. I moved it to the open slot and took another image (to make sure that the slit moved) and I got a reversed slit, my guess the mask. This might be a minor bug, but then again who is going to take a slitview image of an empty slot). Anyway my guess is the slit did not latch in place for the 1.5 arc sec slit and it became very obvious something was wrong. my coordinates must have been wrong for the 3rd mag star but there were a couple relatively bright stars in the field I could use to check collimation better. When I took the telescope out of focus (1000um) the doughnuts did not look too bad (off the slitviewer). The NA2 guider images were another story. They were clipped on the sides. The DIS images looked like cresent moons when the telescope was out of focus. Definately a collimation problem. image dfocus050826.0002b shows what the out of focus images looked like. The red side image showed a clipped edge as well (I didn't notice it in the blue images). Since there is no point in getting an instrument block/pointing model until we collimate the telescope I decided to call it for the night (it was 4AM). My estimate for tommorow night is probably at least 1/2 night to do the essential tasks on Russets list plus collimation. (1. Collimation, 2. NA2guider inst block, 3. pointing model, 4. echelle tip-tilt adjustments, 5. S-H data, after telescope has cooled and needs to be done if we adjust collimation.). She also has less essential tasks as a DIS inst block, which should take about an hour or so, and DISslitviewer focus for blue and red chips, and throughput for DIS. If all goes well it should be a night, or less, of engineering. Also, there was nothing obviously wrong with the beta version (V1.0.1b) of TUI that I was using on my laptop. I can't say I gave it an exceptional shake though. I plan on doing that more tommorow. Other higher priority tasks to get accomplished tonight. ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 01:17 S-H -150(1758) -53 50 14.7/15.9 144 4 none 1 01:56 S-H -75(1861) -63 43 15.5/15.5 187 6 none 1 02:17 S-H -50(1804) -1 62 14.3/15.4 194 1 none 1 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 18:01 68 46 7 269 (W) 265 Mst. Cldy none 19:01 63 47 4 267 (W) 266 Pt. Cldy none 20:01 63 48 1 346 (NNW) 248 Pt. Cldy none 21:01 61 49 0 226 (SW) 298 Mst. Clr none 22:01 62 49 1 232 (SW) 281 Mst. Clr none 23:01 60 47 5 140 (SE) 358 Mst. Clr none 00:01 59 50 7 132 (SE) 365 Mst. Clr none 01:01 58 51 5 125 (SE) 375 Mst. Clr none 02:01 59 48 5 205 (SSW) 353 Mst. Clr none 03:01 59 50 4 187 (S) 420 Clear none 04:01 59 51 5 209 (SSW) 397 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 1.0