Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 06:16:11 -0600 (MDT) From: Jack Dembicky Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20060518 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, May 18, 2006 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- R.Covarrubias R.Covarrubias DIS 23:00 01:00 G.Wolf-Chase G.Wolf-Chase, R.Evans NICFPS 01:00 05:50 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UW02/R 20:58 01:00 2.0 0 0 0 2.0 0 0 0 0 uc04/R 01:00 05:01 0 0 0 0 0.3 3.7 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Dembicky Again the night started with some clouds (and there was rain to our N between us and Cloudcroft) so I delayed opening until I felt conditions were safe. Again we had a N to S flow of clouds (and IR and Radar were showing stuff to our N) Problems with Beta TUI 1.2b4 I discovered tonight 1) FWHM is not displayed for target star while guiding anymore. 2) Dither in NICFPS caused the NA2 guider guidestar to get lost (not compensate) after dither offset is made. I don't believe the computed offset for where the guidestar should be is correct (sometimes close but no cigar). This appears to be broke further than just TUI 1.2b4 as I reverted back to TUI 1.1, on my laptop, and it had problems computing the proper guidestar position after the offset as well. After 5 attempts the guiding fails (I think) but then on the old TUI it appears that it is guiding correctly (I am not sure it is guiding at all at that point but rather just taking images). TUI 1.2b4 displays it has changed to manual mode at that point. TUI 1.1 doesn't say. The NA2 guider switches to manual guide mode when the guiding fails. A rather poor audiable alert (I think it is the alert for guiding fails) is heard, but if you miss it and just look at the NA2 guider screen it isn't obvious that something has changed. 3) I couldn't verify this but I think when the NA2 guider is running and the telescope is slewed, the NA2 guider may not stop but just continue on automatically switching to manual (not star) guide mode. This may just be a remnant of the problem above which I hadn't noticed (but the NA2 guider should stop when a slew command is issued.). I couldn't verify because when I discovered the possible problem my observer was on their last field. The observer notice ghosts in their images on brighter stars with NICFPS. The dither pattern could be seen in their images. The stars were saturating the chip and my guess NICFPS couldn't clear the charge and hence the persistance. The persistant images did appear to be fading with the last postion the brightest and the oldest the dimmest. They also saw the persistance on their darks. I informed them to let NICFPS sit idle for 5-10 mins to clear itself (what Stephane told us several weeks ago when somebody saturated the chip observing bright things). This cleared the persistance on the chip. The rotator at the end of the night was not at 0 degrees, more like 15. It should be re-zero'ed by the day staff today. Also the bottom 2 latches on the rotator need adjustment for DIS and NICFPS. Day staff should also do this during the day. ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 23:07 DISslit -150(1003) -55 58 14.0/14.9 223 8 none 1.2 23:14 NA2gdr -4882(24117) -57 57 14.1/15.0 199 7 R 0.8 00:05 DISslit -75(1035) -27 61 13.9/14.3 255 8 none 1.3 01:07 NICFPS 150(1672) -49 53 13.6/13.8 229 8 H 0.8 03:04 NICFPS 75(1551) 30 56 12.9/13.1 276 6 Ks 0.65 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 18:01 57 30 13 78 (ENE) 1005 Cloudy Sprinkles 19:01 61 28 4 263 (W) 3437 Cloudy none 20:01 58 27 10 232 (SW) 2919 Cloudy none 21:01 57 27 7 202 (SSW) 4174 Cloudy none 22:01 58 26 6 194 (SSW) 2623 Mst. Cldy none 23:01 56 26 8 215 (SW) 1809 Pt. Cldy none 00:01 57 26 7 260 (W) 1605 Pt. Cldy none 01:01 57 26 7 230 (SW) 1481 Pt. Cldy none 02:01 57 26 7 302 (WNW) 1471 Pt. Cldy none 03:01 56 27 8 302 (WNW) 1644 Mst. Clr none 04:01 56 27 10 356 (N) 1395 Clear none 05:01 56 27 15 9 (N) 1268 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 1.1