From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20060115 Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 06:31:36 -0700 (MST) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Sunday, January 15, 2006 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- J.Bary J.Bary,D.Peterson Cormass 20:00 21:20 T.Murphy T.Murphy APOLLO 22:00 23:30 P.Lim P.Lim Echelle 05:00 06:25 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DD02/O 18:17 22:10 0.3 1.4 0 1.1 0 1.1 0 0 0 DD01/O 22:10 02:10 0 2.7 0 0 0 1.3 0 0 0 NM04/R 02:10 06:09 0 2.8 0 0 0 1.2 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan High wind and dust at sunset kept us closed for a few hours. I opened while dust was still a little above the limit, but I was confident that the right fan configuration could keep the levels inside the dome low. We enjoyed about an hour of clear skies to work with CorMASS, but unfortunately the flip mirror acted up again. I phoned Dave Woods and got his description of how to adjust the potentiometer controlling the flip mirror. It took two trips up to the dome to get it right, but soon we were taking data again. Clouds started to move in, but we were able to observe through them at first, until a different problem showed up with the instrument: funky "jailbar" readout patterns. Power-cycling everything helped briefly, but the problem reappeared within a minute. After a few more tries (another power-cycle, switching frame-grabbers), we gave up shortly before the end of time for the program. The on-site observers will work on the problem with instrument experts during the day. APOLLO observations went smoothly, but there were no returns (probably due to bad seeing and thin clouds). When the clouds thickened and settled in to stay, along with rising winds and humidity, I closed. I opened again for a sucker hole around 02:30, but even thicker clouds moved in before we got the echelle focused, so I didn't count that time. Radar and satellite looked unpromising, so I was slow to respond to the next hole, which turned out to be usable -- it was just hard to believe by that time. We got some good echelle data in the last hour-and-some of the night. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- DD02 C I/H 20:17 20:31 flip mirror stuck at SV DD02 C I/H 21:20 22:10 readout problems ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:10 cormass -100(509) 136 69 -0.4/0.7 258 23 K 0.91 22:20 apollo 660(1346)* 95 67 -2.3/-2.3 269 24 - bad 04:57 Echelle -82(-658) -10 62 -8.5/-6.7 286 15 ND1 1.5 * The instrument zeropoint was changed after this measurement ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 39 11 30 247 (WSW) 8549 ptly cldy dust,wind 17:01 37 9 32 260 (W) 5848 ptly cldy dust,wind 18:01 34 3 21 274 (W) 10740 ptly cldy dust 19:01 33 2 27 267 (W) 4972 mstly clr dust 20:01 31 7 26 274 (W) 3868 mstly clr none 21:01 30 8 21 238 (WSW) 2818 ptly cldy none 22:01 28 9 24 257 (WSW) 2620 ptly cldy none 23:01 27 12 21 271 (W) 2256 ptly cldy none 00:01 26 15 20 263 (W) 2036 cloudy none 01:01 25 15 26 281 (W) 1726 cloudy none 02:01 22 13 17 266 (W) 1351 mstly cldy none 03:01 21 10 15 268 (W) 1436 cloudy none 04:01 19 8 22 264 (W) 1043 ptly cldy none 05:01 17 11 11 271 (W) 941 ptly cldy none 06:01 16 10 7 264 (W) 817 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 TCC version: 2.8 Current TUI version: TUI 1.1