From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20050806 Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 05:20:11 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Saturday, August 6, 2005 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- R.Covarrubias R.Covarrubias DIS 00:17 01:27 M.Klaene R.McMillan SH 01:30 02:25 E.Turner R.McMillan SPIcam 02:35 03:50 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UW05/R 20:55 01:00 3.1 0.3 0 0 0.7 0 0 0 0 EN01/W 01:00 02:30 0 0 0.4 0 1.1 0 0 0 0 PU02/W 02:30 05:23 1.6 0 0 0 1.3 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan The night started with rain and clouds and high humidity, but there was some possibility of improvement. The clouds cleared out after 23:00, which only made the humidity go up more. Just as the first half observer was about to give up, humidity dropped and I decided to be aggressive about it. We opened in time for a brief focus and a couple of science exposures. Humidity ranged up and down on short timescales, but mostly stayed below the limit. The cloud camera was not working, apparently as a result of all the computer reboots from yesterday; a critical connection could not be made. The sky appeared mostly clear after about midnight, but without a moon (or infrared eyes), it was hard to be sure about that. When the observer tried to offset in between exposures, we discovered a very serious bug in the newest version of the TCC that caused a crash with a wide variety of offset commands. I spent a while finding out just how many different kinds of commands would crash the TCC connection, then finally had the observer take his second exposure without offsetting. I let him run past the scheduled changeover time by about the same amount of time that I had spent working on the problem, and then I counted that time as part of the engineering pre-empt instead. Once the first-half observer was done, I reverted the TCC to its previous version (2.7.3) and confirmed that offsets now worked normally. Then I checked collimation with a quick focus donut and found to my surprise that it looked just fine. Maybe it will pop later -- or maybe, since we're expecting it, it won't. Instead of the Shack-Hartmann, I switched to the echelle for a pointing check. It was pretty far off, but easily fixed. With the major engineering concerns addressed, I was ready for service observing. Patchy clouds were moving back in after 02:00, but seeing turned out to be excellent for the lens monitoring. Humidity hovered near the limit, with the telescope slowly cooling. I managed to get all the accessible lenses before humidity crept too high, but some of them were at non-optimal airmass. Just as I was about to close due to the humidity, the rotator apparently tried to run away, but overcurrented almost at once. I could see absolutely nothing about the situation that would cause a runaway, and the rotator moved normally after re-initialization. So that makes three high-priority PRs for tonight. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFNVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- UW05 D T/H --:-- --:-- Cloudcam not working EN01 D T/S 00:42 01:07 offsets crash TCC! PU02 S T/H 03:50 03:50 rotator runaway, overcurrent ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 02:53 SPIcam 0(1166) 218 74 12.1/12.5 312 3 r 0.67 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 59 52 10 79 (ENE) 335 cloudy lt rain 17:01 54 49 8 24 (NNE) 237 cloudy none 18:01 56 51 11 53 (NE) 291 mstly cldy none 19:01 57 51 7 67 (ENE) 299 mstly cldy none 20:01 54 51 9 80 (E) 370 mstly cldy lt rain 21:01 54 50 9 103 (ESE) 382 mstly cldy none 22:01 54 51 10 86 (E) 596 mstly cldy none 23:01 53 51 12 75 (ENE) 698 ptly cldy none 00:01 53 51 8 80 (E) 795 mstly clr none 01:01 54 49 3 354 (N) 325 mstly clr none 02:01 53 49 4 353 (N) 332 ptly cldy none 03:01 54 49 2 326 (NW) 431 ptly cldy none 04:01 53 49 0 197 (SSW) 763 mstly clr humid 05:01 51 50 2 176 (S) 1381 mstly clr humid 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: 2.7.3 Current TUI version: TUI 1.0b2