From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20060715 Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 05:57:16 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Saturday, July 15, 2006 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- J.Fulbright J.Fulbright,G.Ruchti ECHELLE 23:08 01:05 T.Murphy T.Murphy,R.McMillan APOLLO 01:19 05:20 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JH05/R 21:14 01:10 1.8 0 0 0 0.5 1.6 0 0 0 UW11/R 01:10 05:58 0 0.3 0 0 0 3.6 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: G.Saurage Various radar activity in the area during evening checkout. Raining at 7:40pm with high gusts (~38mph). Raining again at 9:46pm, but wind died down. Sky began clearing a little before 11pm. Radar threats dissipated. Opened a little after 11pm. Skies were mostly clear by 12:15pm. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Humidity remained just below the limit as the telescope cooled. Since the moon was too low to be useful at the start of the APOLLO time, I grabbed one echelle spectrum of an object of interest before handing the telescope over. Seeing was around 1 arcsecond at low airmass just before the handover, but looked worse at the moon's high-airmass position. Disappointly, there were no returns from the moon despite the decent conditions. Something non-obvious appeared to be wrong with the laser. Orographic clouds posed a problem for a short space of time from 04:15 to 04:30. After that, they cleared off and the humidiity dropped a little, but the laser still wasn't working. This remains an unsolved issue that might need to be addressed tomorrow during engineering, depending on what the weather is like. Another odd thing was that the secondary mirror never cooled below air temperature, although the primary did. I couldn't find anything that would explain that. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, unless it indicates some abnormal heat source in the top end. The dome IR camera doesn't currently see the top end. ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 23:30 Echelle -20(281) 32 66 13.5 94 7 clear 1.2 01:40 apollo -75(2044) 105 25 12.5/13.0 110 11 - 1.3 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:00 66 43 11 68 (ENE) 813 mstly cldy none 17:00 68 41 14 102 (ESE) 824 mstly cldy none 18:00 65 43 8 64 (ENE) 973 cloudy none 19:00 63 43 16 68 (ENE) 1060 cloudy rain 20:00 55 47 20 75 (ENE) 1230 cloudy none 21:00 57 48 12 99 (E) 1545 cloudy lt rain 22:00 57 49 12 127 (SE) 1471 cloudy none 23:00 57 50 7 103 (ESE) 1367 ptly cldy none 00:00 57 50 10 99 (E) 1427 mstly clr none 01:00 55 50 13 126 (SE) 1373 mstly clr none 02:00 55 49 9 109 (ESE) 1342 mstly clr none 03:00 55 49 8 107 (ESE) 1345 ptly cldy none 04:00 54 48 14 113 (ESE) 1243 ptly cldy none 05:00 55 48 13 77 (ENE) 1139 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