From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20060325 Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 05:43:53 -0700 (MST) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Saturday, March 25, 2006 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- G.Kacprzak G.Kacprzak,C.Churchill SPIcam 18:25 05:13 J.Evans,R.Avila 05:34 05:45 G.Stringfellow R.McMillan Echelle 05:13 05:32 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NM02/R 19:12 05:06 0 0 0.5 0 8.7 0.7 0 0 0 DD08/W/D 05:06 05:56 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.8 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan, G.Saurage Tonight had more more high clouds and less good seeing than the previous night, but it was still decent weather. I was puzzled first half by an elongation in the spicam images that was consistently oriented on the chip (7 o'clock to 1 o'clock) instead of being aligned with either az or alt; the orientation did not change even when a target was followed through significant sky rotation. The PMSS was calm to only slightly noisy when these images were taken. I couldn't think of anything except internal instrument optics (very minimal in the case of spicam) that could produce such an effect. The observers later followed one target through a very high southern transit (84.8 degrees), and tracking was reasonable throughout, giving more evidence that the elongation was not due to a tracking problem. During second half, the seeing degraded to about 1.4 arcsec, and the elongation was no longer very noticeable. At 02:17 and 02:52, we had two overcurrent events on the altitude axis, which appeared to be related to tracking downward in the face of a stiff west wind (gusts up to 30 mph). The first overcurrent ruined a half-hour exposure. After the second event, I made the observers move to an eastern target away from the wind direction. Shortly after that, there were a couple of strong gusts over and near the limit, but I stayed open since we were out of the wind, and soon the gusts decreased. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NM02 S T/H 01:55 02:25 alt overcurrent ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:01 SPIcam -25(918) 109 71 5.8/7.4 216 14 r 0.85 19:03 NA2gdr -1459(31540)110 71 5.8/7.3 226 20 R 0.81 05:17 Echelle 0(-114) 172 50 3.8/3.5 276 12 ND1 1.25 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 46 12 12 268 (W) 1203 cirrus none 17:01 49 15 12 207 (SSW) 1442 cirrus none 18:01 46 15 19 237 (WSW) 1445 cirrus none 19:01 43 14 11 229 (SW) 1495 cirrus none 20:01 44 13 15 213 (SSW) 1547 cirrus none 21:01 44 11 16 206 (SSW) 1329 clear none 22:01 44 9 17 228 (SW) 1390 cirrus none 23:01 44 9 17 240 (WSW) 1403 cirrus none 00:01 43 10 16 238 (WSW) 1575 ptly cldy none 01:01 42 11 23 226 (SW) 1613 ptly cldy none 02:01 41 8 26 253 (WSW) 1952 ptly cldy none 03:01 39 7 26 268 (W) 1921 ptly cldy none 04:01 40 8 21 272 (W) 1768 ptly cldy none 05:01 40 8 14 286 (WNW) 1744 ptly cldy 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: 2.8.2 Current TUI version: TUI 1.1