Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20061004 Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 07:20:49 -0600 (MDT) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu (Bill Ketzeback) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Tuesday, October 3, 2006 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- J.Smith J.Bary,J.Smith,C.Franks Cormass 19:10 23:40 T.Murphy R.McMillan Apollo 23:40 01:10 J.Bary J.Bary,J.Smith,C.Franks Cormass 01:10 06:40 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 19:38 23:40 0 0 0 0 0 4.0 0 0 0 DD04/O 23:40 01:10 0 0 0 0 0 1.5 0 0 0 DD01/O 01:10 06:06 0 0 0.5 0 1.6 2.9 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: G.Saurage SPIcam temps 187.2 at 18:00. A few wisps of clouds at sunset mostly clear skies remainder of 1st half. Pointing with Cormass seemed to be fine tonight. Focus between the NA2 guider and the images on the Cormass display seemed to be slightly different. Cormass favored a lower focus value than the guider by about 50-75 microns. The outside particulate counter (both the 0.3 & 1.0 micron) stopped reporting values after 10pm. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback Apollo observations seemed to go very well. Russet adjusted the azimuth tuning parameters to improve tracking with APOLLO. Shortly after the end of APOLLO observations I noticed a strange warning message associated with slews that asked for the tuning parameters to be adjusted. When I brought this to Russets attention she looked back at the tcc log and was suprised to find these were happening all night. A problem report was issued for this condition. Second half pointing was not great. Most of the objects the observer was looking at were east of the meridian and high altitude, slews were short but offsets to get the object into the field of view varied alot. (+/- 25 arcseconds object x and y). Seeing was decent with sub arcsecond seeing on the guider. The cormass instrument problems were minor until 05:20 when all instrument icc communications locked up and it took several power cycles to bring it back to life. It again got in the same condition at 06:15. By the time it was operating the sky was too bright to observe and we closed for the night. SPIcam temp was 181.6 at 07:00 ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DD01 C I/H 05:20 05:50 Serial Line could not talk to inst. ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM ------------------------------------------------------------------ 19:25 Cormass 350(191) 15 40 13.4 16.9 15.2 15.8 14.4 -- ? 20:12 NA2guider -325(138) 31 35 13.0 15.8 14.3 14.9 13.7 -- 1.0 21:26 NA2guider -150(186) 59 56 13.9 14.4 13.6 14.6 13.8 -- 0.7 22:05 NA2guider -50(304) 71 50 13.8 14.0 13.3 14.2 13.7 -- 0.9 22:15 Cormass -125(218) 76 50 13.9 13.9 13.2 14.1 13.6 -- ? 22:15 Cormass -150(175) 83 43 13.7 13.6 13.1 13.9 13.2 -- ? 23:57 apollo -135(857) 215 34 13.7 13.2 12.6 13.3 13.0 -- good 01:29 cormass -175(56) 77 44 13.6 12.9 12.4 13.1 12.9 -- 1.0 01:29 NA2gdr -4173(24826) 77 44 13.6 12.9 12.4 13.1 12.9 R 0.84 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 63 39 12 228 (SW) 581 mstly clr none 17:00 62 39 4 253 (WSW) 665 mstly clr none 18:00 60 39 1 243 (WSW) 624 mstly clr none 19:00 57 39 6 309 (NW) 573 clear none 20:00 56 39 8 329 (NNW) 597 mstly clr none 21:00 57 39 5 274 (W) 558 mstly clr none 22:00 57 40 3 243 (WSW) 476 mstly clr none 23:00 57 40 2 192 (SSW) mstly clr none 00:00 57 39 1 141 (SE) mstly clr none 01:00 57 35 1 137 (SE) mstly clr none 02:00 56 34 6 177 (S) mstly clr none 03:00 55 36 5 184 (S) mstly clr none 04:00 53 40 10 124 (SE) mstly clr none 05:00 54 42 9 136 (SE) clear none 06:00 53 43 8 114 (ESE) 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 TCC version: 2.8.4 Current TUI version: TUI 1.2