Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20060524
Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 06:26:46 -0600 (MDT)
From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu (Bill Ketzeback)
                        Apache Point Observatory
                        3.5m Telescope Night Log
                         Wednesday, May 24, 2006
                                                         ACTUAL
 ASTRONOMER      OBSERVER(S)            INSTRUMENT     START FINISH
 --------------------------------------------------------------------
 B.Lawton        B.Lawton                DIS           21:00 00:45
 M.Hammergren    M.Hammergren,A.Puckett, DIS           00:50 06:20
                 G.Gyuk
  INST     SCHED(TWILIGHT)   WEATH     EQUIP     OBS     DAY  NOT USED
 I/ROW/DN    START FINISH   D    B    D    B    D    B   USE   D    B
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 NM05/R      21:03 01:00    0    0   0.3   0   3.7   0    0    0    0
 UC06/R      01:00 04:57    0    0    0    0   3.5  0.5   0    0    0
  note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time
                ------------- ACTIVITY LOG --------------
 Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback
 The first half observer had agreed to let G.Wallerstein use afternoon
 twilight for some quick echelle observations. However because of the
 slow internet George was unable to log in. I offered to take the observations
 for him however due to the tcc hot swap last night pointing with the
 echelle was so bad, I could not locate Deneb or Arcturus. After a spiral
 pattern on Arcturus I did finally learn that pointing was off by -30" North
 and -90" W. I ran out of time alotted for George to make the pointing
 correction or to take Georges data for him. It is not clear wether the
 tcc35m was updated with the most upto date pointing model or not during
 the day.
 My first half observer had a terrible time with slow internet speed and
 connectivity until finally the last 30 minutes of his time he could not
 reconnect at all and I took over his observations. He seemed to loose his
 connection several times per hour and I estimated he lost perhaps 20 minutes
 of observing just being unable to reconnect.
 Second half appeared to be smoother for the users. The connections were slow
 but they didnt get booted off at all. There were a couple times however when
 they needed to stop observing in order to allow image downloads to catchup.
 Craig Loomis had warned me that it would be a difficult night for users if
 they tried to run the slitviewer faster than with 15 second exposures and
 to have users keep track of their current AutoGet downloads. If more than a
 few downloads were in progress users should stop what they were doing and
 let the downloads catch up. Otherwise the network would slow to a crawl
 and they would likely see things freeze up or they would loose connection.
 The T1 just does not have the bandwidth that the radio link does and until
 the problems with the radio link are resolved we will have to suffer the
 painfully slow bandwidth. There was one instance when I needed to restart
 dcam/dcamera because the mask was being displayed instead of a science frame.
 Background was screwy for a few images after the reset. After a few frames
 the ccd temp returned in spec and images looked normal again.
                       ------- FAILURE LOG -------
  PROG   INST   FAILURE MODE     TIME
       (SEDFNVOG)    TI/SHU   START  FINISH  DESCRIPTION
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 NM05     D           T/H     00:20  00:40   Various internet outages
 UC06     D           T/H     03:10  03:14   Dcam displayed mask but no image
                ---------------- FOCUS LOG ---------------
                                        Air/Truss   Wind
 Time   Instrument   Focus     Az  El    Temp-C    Dir MPH  filt  FWHM
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 21:12 dis-slit    -175(1223)  235 53  18.1/20.2  253  2    -     0.89
                ------------- WEATHER LOG ----------------
                                   Wind                      Precip.or
     Time   Temp F Dewp F  MPH  Direction    Dust    Sky    Conditions
    ------------------------------------------------------------------
     16:01    75    31     10   204  (SSW)    745   clear     none
     17:01    74    29      6   261  (W)      706   clear     none
     18:01    73    28     10   248  (WSW)    779   clear     none
     19:01    69    25      9   264  (W)      732   clear     none
     20:01    65    20      3   263  (W)      714   clear     none
     21:01    64    19      4   267  (W)      851   clear     none
     22:01    65    20      0   232  (SW)     919   clear     none
     23:01    65    20      0   163  (SSE)   1929   clear     none
     00:01    63    19      1   178  (S)     1486   clear     none
     01:01    61    18      9    79  (ENE)   1543   clear     none
     02:01    62    19      6   149  (SSE)   1159   clear     none
     03:01    62    19      6   187  (S)      881   clear     none
     04:01    61    18      5   182  (S)      898   clear     none
     05:01    61    17      7   185  (S)     1091   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