Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2006 06:32:21 -0700 (MST) From: Jack Dembicky Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20061204 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Monday, December 4, 2006 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- D.York D.York Echelle 17:03 19:38 NICFPS 19:38 00:02 T.Murphy R.McMillan APOLLO 00:02 01:30 I.Ivans I.Ivans Echelle 01:30 06:30 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- UC05/R 17:54 00:00 0 0 0 0 0 6.1 0 0 0 UW19/O 00:00 01:40 0 0 0 0 0 1.7 0 0 0 PU03/R 01:40 05:53 0 0 0 0 0 4.2 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Dembicky TCC was backed up today. A few systems didn't like it but no big problems. Echelle mirror was in a strange position and the ThAr lamp was on (not sure if the lamp state had anything to due with the TCC going down). NICFPS computer needed to be re-connected to TCC (I just rebooted it and all was well again). I took a quick DIS image and I think it worked, although it was a dark since I had the cover on the instrument. SPIcam looked like it survived the tcc backup as well. Don's first Echelle exposure gave a new error I hadn't seen before: echelleExpose f echelleExposeTxt="I don't trust the path /export/images/Q4UC05/UT061112/Q4APO/UT061205/." When he tried a second time, it put the file in the appropriate location and it took the image without complaint. I didn't have any problems earlier with my Echelle test images. For Russell: I tried the Echelle focus script tonight. A couple bugs I found. 1) You need to center the star in the slit before starting the script. ctrl+clicking in View mode is BAD, It doesn't move the star as expected (usually a lot more). I originally had the star to the left of the slit (about 1/2 way from the edge to the slit). When I first rran the script, it did another offset, which moved the star off the view window. Ctrl+Click to move the star on the slit (in view mode) move the star WAY out of the field (top upper right in full mode when I took an image to find the star). After getting the star back on the slit, the focus script was in expose/sweep mode. Since it was in this mode it now would not move the star out of the slit for me (which it does initially when you click start). I clicked Cancel to cancel the script, and then start to start the script again. This time it did the offset but gave me an error "Failed: Already in user wait mode". I have no idea what that means and it would not let me run a focus sweep anymore (even exiting the script itself didn't fix the problem). At some point in there I also lost the star completely (in the View/full mode ctrl+click problem the star went Bye Bye). I had Don re-slew, and the focus script still didn't work (gave me the same Failed error above). At this point I gave up on the focus script and defaulted back to the old method of focusing the Echelle. Further analysis of failure. (from focusing Echelle for my 3rd half observer). Put star in slit. Star focus script. Does offset and takes image Returns Failed: Already in user wait mode. Start button become avail again, all others ghosted. No Expose/Sweep It appears to have moved the star back into the slit (where it initially was) Ctrl+click didn't seem to center up star (02:16) for my observer. I tried it as well, and mine didn't work either (02:17). I ctrl+clicked where I thought (off from the star) and got it to move the star to the slit. I noticed the blue cross was not in the right spot anymore either, like the imcentering moved somehow. This was the first time she did it, as I did it last time (when I tried the focus script and it failed). The focus script seemed to have landed the star back in the slit so I didn't move it after that (we just started boresight guiding). This was the first slew after the focus script failure, maybe that has something to do with it. Once I got the star on the slit the boresight guiding worked fine. I looked at the old slit images (look at slitview images 297 thru 325) and you can see the blue cross wander out of the slit to the upper right during these exposures. I don't know why. When I started guiding with the new object the blue cross stayed put (where it stopped drifting). I tried fixing the problem using the imcenter command. That indeed moved the blue cross to the slit (and the star then moved to the slit when ctrl+clicked) but it also moved the red cross the same amount (which was ON the slit and now it moved off) which is what the guider used for boresight guiding. Not good. I then issued a set inst=echelle, to reset everything back to the defaults, but that just moved the red cross back to the slit and put the blue cross back off the slit (where it was). The fudge fix was to just ctrl+click the same amount/direction that the star was from the slit but use the star as the reference point and ctrl+click that amount from there (basically ctrl+clk double the distance it was off) and that dropped the star on the slit, which TUI could then guide on. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:29 Echelle -110(-979) -4 62 3.5 4.0 3.3 3.3 3.7 ND3 0.86 19:44 NICFPS -110(316) -29 55 3.8 3.4 2.9 3.1 3.4 Ks 0.58 00:08 APOLLO -25(679) -21 73 5.1 3.2 2.6 2.8 4.2 -- 1.2 01:42 Echelle -106(-982) 138 61 4.1 3.6 3.2 3.1 3.4 clr 1.4 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:01 41 -16 1 218 (SW) 325 cirrus none 17:01 40 -27 8 145 (SE) 333 cirrus none 18:01 38 -29 8 138 (SE) 370 cirrus none 19:01 38 -30 11 109 (ESE) 396 cirrus none 20:01 39 -30 8 105 (ESE) 373 clear none 21:01 39 -30 10 113 (ESE) 354 clear none 22:01 38 -30 15 122 (ESE) 415 clear none 23:01 39 -29 10 178 (S) 303 clear none 00:01 41 -30 18 143 (SE) 356 mst. clr none 01:01 39 -29 8 178 (S) 398 mst. clr none 02:01 41 -28 10 174 (S) 251 pt. cldy none 03:01 41 20 9 252 (WSW) 84 pt. cldy none 04:01 41 18 7 241 (WSW) 218 pt. cldy none 05:01 42 21 14 278 (W) 275 mst. clr none 06:01 40 21 10 262 (W) 395 mst. 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: 2.8.4 Current TUI version: TUI 1.2