Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 05:58:27 -0600 (MDT) From: Jack Dembicky Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20050828 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Sunday, Aug 28, 2005 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Klaene J.Dembicky SPIcam 19:45 20:35 Echelle 21:45 22:45 T.Murphy K.Covey DIS 22:45 01:00 T.Murphy, E.Michelsen, APOLLO 04:45 05:35 E.Swanson, W.West, G.VanDoren 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 20:28 01:00 1.2 0 0 0 3.3 0 0 0 0 DD03/O 01:00 05:41 0.7 3.1 0 0 0 0.9 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Dembicky I started the night by first getting some sky flats for the PU02 program that I might be doing later in the evening. Then it was off to fix the echelle pointing. Again I couldn't find a star so I called Russet for advice. She made some adjustments and we slewed to Vega and got one echelle guider exposure before I needed to close the telescope. The star was not visible in the guide camera image but there was a glow in the lower right corner that might be Vega. Since the clouds stopped the observations I had to wait an hour before I could get back on the sky to see if indeed that was Vega. Once I got back on the sky I did some ctrl+click offsets to find Vega in the FOV of the echelle slitviewer camera. Indeed the glow was Vega but it was way off (maybe 4 frames). I edited the instrument block file that Russet told me to (subtracting values) and it seemed to improve how far it was away. After about 3 or 4 itterations of editing the file I finally had vega in the field and used echpoint to drop it on the slit. BTW, it the Ytilt changed considerably (like from 1600 to 80, I think we actually started out at 1300 and Russet added 400 to it at the start of the night). Anyway, I checked it on some nearby stars and the fell near on the slit. Then I did a farther slew and the stars also fell nearly on the slit there. At this point I was basically completed with the essential engineering tasks that needed to be accomplished. I opted to not do the PU02 program tonight since the seeing measurements from the Echelle indicated about 1.5 arc sec seeing and there was only one very low priority target available to observer for the PU02 program in that case. I gave the time over to K.Covey (Per S.Hawley) to use DIS until 01:00. Kevin remarked that the pointing was excellent with DIS. At 01:00 the winds speeds were just over the closure limit, but more significantly the humidity seemed to be on the rise. Tom opted to wait a bit, plus the seeing was really bad, and see what the weather was going to do. Within 20 mins we were closed due to humidity (and winds still at closure limits). We re-opened at 03:30 once the winds and humidity dropped below closure limits. We fired the laser at the moon on 2 attempts to capture return photons but the very poor seeing made things difficult to say the least. Eventually the humidity climbed above the closure limits and closed us back up at 05:35. The base engineering tasks are completed and the telescope is ready to return to science as scheduled tommorow. ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 21:50 Echelle -123(113) 232 80 11.6/12.7 77 17 ND3 1.5 22:38 Echelle -4(230) -3 58 11.3/12.1 68 22 ND1 1.5 22:57 DISslit -75(951) -11 57 11.5/12.0 65 22 none 1.3 23:07 NA2gdr -3443(19556) -15 56 11.5/11.8 68 14 R 1.0 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 18:01 59 44 14 46 (NE) 290 Mst. Clr none 19:01 55 46 20 54 (NE) 286 Mst. Clr none 20:01 58 35 18 33 (NNE) 185 Pt. Cldy none 21:01 54 39 18 59 (ENE) 190 Mst. Cldy none 22:01 53 42 18 58 (ENE) 230 Clear none 23:01 53 42 22 68 (ENE) 221 Clear none 00:01 51 42 20 75 (ENE) 218 Clear none 01:01 48 43 25 71 (ENE) 169 Pt. Cldy none 02:01 48 47 15 61 (ENE) 309 Pt. Cldy none 03:01 50 45 21 63 (ENE) 339 Clear none 04:01 52 43 19 54 (NE) 235 Clear none 05:01 51 44 21 52 (NE) 291 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