From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20060701 Date: Sun, 2 Jul 2006 05:32:17 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Saturday, July 1, 2006 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- T.Murphy R.McMillan APOLLO 20:10 21:15 N.Chanover M.Sussman Echelle 21:25 00:40 S.McCandliss S.McCandliss, R.Lupu NICFPS 01:25 06:23 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UW11/O 20:24 21:24 0 0 0 0 0 0.1 0.9 0 0 NM03/O 21:24 01:10 0 0 0 0 0.9 2.8 0 0 0 JH01/O 01:10 04:55 0 0 0 0 3.8 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan, G.Saurage Puffy afternoon clouds cleared off by sunset, and we had mostly clear but not quite photometric skies for ranging the moon. An east wind meant poor seeing, though, and we also had quite a bit of image motion. We got weak returns from Apollo 15 and didn't try any of the other reflectors. Once the echelle was focused (still lousy seeing) and observing Jupiter, it was pig-out time. Thirteen diners had already started on the chips and homemade salsa, crackers and brie, avocado, olives, and other random appetizers. Now it was time for cucumber and potato soup, cabbage-stuffed rolls, kowloon chicken over rice, pork chops with barbecue sauce, fruit kebabs with chocolate sauce, fruit "soup", chocolate cream cheese and fruit pie, and ice cream with or without fruit and chocolate sauce. Seeing was occasionally bad enough to make Jupiter look more like Uranus, but for the most part everything went well. Jupiter got quite low before the scheduled changeover, so the first half observer handed the telescope over a little early, and we had a chance to adjust velocity scales for middle-of-night temperatures. Then we had more fun with drifting stars across the slit, as described last night. Guiding on the DIS slitviewer worked better than guiding with the NA2 guider; we did boresight guiding until the boresight moved off the slitviewer, and then we did field star guiding. Challenges for the night included a persistent BadAxisDTime error of about 0.5s starting around UT 09:40 which would not clear with repeated axis init commands. Pointing was okay, so I just let the warnings scroll by. Another problem-which-wasn't-a-problem was that tertiary tilts seemed to take a long time to settle after the instrument was changed to echelle; I turned on MAXCORR briefly at the time of the port change, but I had to set it higher than usually needed, and the B actuator vacillated around the correct position for many updates before settling. Although having worrisome implications for the future health of tcc35m and the tertiary mirror, these problems cost no on-sky time. ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 21:57 Echelle -100(233) 175 60 14.1/14.6 79 12 nd3 2.0 00:18 Echelle 100(324) 178 81 12.6/13.0 89 15 ND3 2.3 01:21 DISslit 0(1006) 123 73 12.1/12.4 110 15 - 2.1 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:00 69 47 6 193 (SSW) 584 ptly cldy none 17:00 66 43 1 247 (WSW) 605 ptly cldy none 18:00 64 40 1 337 (NNW) 524 ptly cldy none 19:00 63 38 8 67 (ENE) 490 ptly cldy none 20:00 60 38 17 70 (ENE) 496 ptly cldy none 21:00 57 37 18 83 (E) 556 ptly cldy none 22:00 57 38 15 84 (E) 628 ptly cldy none 23:00 56 40 17 76 (ENE) 751 ptly cldy none 00:00 55 41 18 77 (ENE) 774 mstly clr none 01:00 54 42 19 112 (ESE) 760 mstly clr none 02:00 53 44 10 90 (E) 792 mstly clr none 03:00 54 43 11 84 (E) 745 mstly clr none 04:00 54 41 10 84 (E) 818 mstly clr none 05:00 54 40 4 84 (E) 788 mstly clr 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 1.2