Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 07:36:27 -0700 (MST) From: Jack Dembicky Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20060206 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Monday, February 6, 2006 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Drosback M.Drosback, B.Keeney DIS 05:20 00:06 M.Agueros M.Agueros DIS 00:06 05:48 T.Tavenner T.Tavenner, C.Anderson NICFPS 05:48 07:25 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CU06/R 18:36 00:10 0 0 0 0 0 5.6 0 0 0 UW11/R 00:10 05:59 0 0 0 0 2.9 2.9 0 0 0 NM03/O 05:59 06:45 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.4 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Dembicky During checkout the mirror cover between the Echelle and APOLLO cover opened slightly and then refused to open/close remotely. I manually close/opened the covers. They worked fine in the morning. The put a ND filter (6% transmission) in front of NICFPS this mornign and that seemed to fix the problem of too much light getting into the instrument and saturating the chip from Venus with the enclosure doors fully open. While taking dome flats with NICFPS at the end of the night my observers noticed a horizontal brighter stripe in their images while subframing. They saw this last night as well and the fix was to switch to full frame and then back to sub-frame. They also noticed that they had a dark region on the chip (where the sub-frame was) on the full frame (with a lamp on). My guess was residual charge on the entire chip and since they were subframing that region was only being cleared. I suggested taking several masks (darks) to flush the entire chip and get rid of the dark spot (actually the bright unflushed regions). That fixed the problem. During some of their subframes (with lamps) they still had a horizontal bar of lighter pixels at the bottom (bottom 30 pixels), they would also see the occasional ligher bar on the top (from pixels ~170-256). They bar would go away the next frame. During a sequence of ten 7 second flat exposures the instrument started failing with the following errors (time was 07:19): NM03.tanya 99 nicfpsExpose i nicfpsSeqState="NM03.tanya","object",7.0,2,10,"running" NM03.tanya 99 nicfpsExpose i comment="testing neutral density filt" NM03.tanya 99 nicfpsExpose i nicfpsNextPath="NM03.tanya","","domeh2.","0139",".fits" NM03.tanya 99 nicfpsExpose i nicfpsNewFiles="NM03.tanya","tycho.apo.nmsu.edu","/export/images/","Q1NM03/UT060207/","","domeh2.0139.fits" NM03.tanya.nicfpsExpose 429 nicfps w UNPARSEDTEXT="ERROR: Setting exposure time failed -> 0x0" NM03.tanya.nicfpsExpose 429 nicfps f .hub 0 cmds i CmdDone=1337499 NM03.tanya 99 nicfpsExpose i nicfpsSeqState="NM03.tanya","object",7.0,2,10,"failed" NM03.tanya 99 nicfpsExpose i comment="testing neutral density filt" NM03.tanya 99 nicfpsExpose i nicfpsNextPath="NM03.tanya","","domeh2.","0139",".fits" NM03.tanya 99 nicfpsExpose f exposeTxt="object failed" .h They just took the images individually and that seemed to work. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:03 DISslit 25(572) 194 69 1.8/1.7 357 8 none 1.0 00:06 DISslit 0(516) 302 69 1.0/0.9 13 7 none 0.85 06:08 NICFPS 225(1216) 112 48 1.3/1.2 26 7 H2-2.25 1.15 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 33 3 2 270 (W) 1299 Clear none 17:01 31 4 0 179 (S) 1507 Clear none 18:01 34 2 13 57 (NE) 1629 Clear none 19:01 35 -7 9 5 (N) 376 Clear none 20:01 35 -7 4 8 (N) 504 Clear none 21:01 34 -8 3 17 (NNE) 463 Clear none 22:01 36 -10 8 6 (N) 455 Clear none 23:01 35 -11 15 8 (N) 322 Clear none 00:01 34 -11 11 2 (N) 313 Clear none 01:01 34 -13 2 229 (SW) 362 Clear none 02:01 34 -13 9 35 (NE) 400 Clear none 03:01 33 -13 15 10 (N) 395 Clear none 04:01 34 -13 7 343 (NNW) 485 Clear none 05:01 36 -10 3 353 (N) 359 Clear none 06:01 36 -10 10 1 (N) 386 Clear none 07:01 37 -10 9 353 (N) 466 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 Current TUI version: TUI 1.1