From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20060509 Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 05:31:17 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Tuesday, May 9, 2006 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Klaene R.McMillan, DIS,NIC,SH, 02:00 05:20 S.Beland NA2gdr INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EN02/W 20:50 05:09 0 5.2 0 0 0.6 2.6 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: Russet McMillan High winds and dust kept us closed for all of first half and part of second. While closed, we did some persistence tests with NIC-FPS (results not in yet), internal focus work on DIS (tiny changes to red and blue resulting in tiny improvements), and in-dome testing of the new azimuth drives (ooh la-la). Once I was able to open, I spent a while doing tracking tests with the Shack-Hartmann video camera. I was able to confirm reasonably good tracking in parts of the sky where the old azimuth motors had trouble, but I couldn't do better because of the wind and seeing conditions. I didn't make any permanent changes to the tuning parameters; the new velocity scale is also very similar to the old one. When the telescope had been open for an hour and was cooled below the air temperature, I got a collimation check (no adjustment needed) and moved to NA2 for a pointing model. During all the slews and offsets, both the new drives and the new TCC software performed unimpeachably. Since the DIS focus had been adjusted, I finished up with a check of slitviewer vs. red vs. blue focus. They were consistent within the limitations of the seeing, but could possibly use a recheck under more stable conditions. ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 05:07 DISslit 50(914) 36 57 8.8/8.3 1 22 - 1.05 05:16 DIS(red) 75(938) 35 59 8.7/8.3 14 23 - 1.15 05:17 DIS(blue) 50(908) 35 59 8.7/8.3 14 23 - 1.18 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 61 17 17 262 (W) 3143 clear none 17:01 60 17 28 267 (W) 3697 clear none 18:01 61 16 30 265 (W) 3505 clear wind 19:01 59 13 30 258 (WSW) 3587 clear wind 20:01 57 11 30 256 (WSW) 3427 clear wind 21:01 55 10 24 263 (W) 3721 clear dust 22:01 52 21 5 276 (W) 24834 clear dust 23:01 50 25 7 2 (N) 19803 clear dust 00:01 50 22 7 355 (N) 14326 clear dust 01:01 48 24 9 14 (NNE) 7195 clear dust 02:01 47 25 21 13 (NNE) 4813 clear none 03:01 47 22 23 7 (N) 4405 clear none 04:01 47 17 15 23 (NNE) 3806 clear none 05:01 48 19 20 356 (N) 3905 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