Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20060824 Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2006 06:58:37 -0600 (MDT) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu (Bill Ketzeback) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, August 24, 2006 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- G.Gyuk A.Puckett,M.Hammergren, NicFps 20:10 22:05 G.Gyuk 00:05 01:05 D.Bowen D.Bowen DIS 01:35 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- UC06/R 20:34 01:10 3.1 0 0 0 1.5 0 0 0 0 PU03/R 01:10 05:38 0 0 0 0 4.5 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: W.Ketzeback Very uncertain weather tonight. It was difficult to gauge when we were experiencing a sucker hole or if the skies were going to be clear for the next 10 minutes. At 2300, after much of an hour of this mix of mostly clear and totally overcast skies. I was in the process of closing when the rain sensor went off. Half of mirror covers were already closed and the sprinkles were light but still rain fell on the mirror. 20 minutes later when it again might have been safe to open I sat for more than 30 minutes with the dome closed and clear skies uncertain if this was another sucker hole. Then when I did open, the clouds reappeared suddenly. Second half was a bit more stable but also had periods where clouds would quickly cover the sky and then as quickly disappear before we could decide wether to close or not. Both the IR satellite and weather radars showed no threat of precip at the time of the rain fall. There were a few mysterious failures tonight. During evening checkout test slews the secondary failed to adjust its Piston position on Actuators A and B. A being off by about 100,000 steps and B about 50,000. I attempted an incremental focus adjustment to see if the actuators would correct themselves, when this did not work I tried another slew. This corrected the problem. However it seemed sufficently scarey that I kept a close eye on the mirror status all night with no reoccuring problems. The past three nights image quality has been rather poor. Best focus images either appear to be elongated in the azimuthal direction or triangular in appearance. Besides trouble focusing NicFps during the variable cloud cover it was quite difficult to find a good focus position due to the pinched appearance of the images. (see: Q3APO/UT060823/nf.*.fits). Second half user had some difficulty with the slitviewer locking up. Also neither of us could get the "Apply" button in the slitview window to appear active, it was always greyed out. ----------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UC06 N T/H --:-- --:-- Secondary actuators did not move ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 21:20 nicfps -9(1576) 197 67 15.5/16.3 233 6 Ks 0.95 01:41 dis-slit 100(1191) 200 77 14.5/14.6 267 5 - 1.04 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 69 50 4 266 (W) 502 mstly clr none 17:00 64 46 6 265 (W) 473 mstly clr none 18:00 68 47 9 241 (WSW) 542 clear none 19:00 63 49 7 266 (W) 547 ptly cldy none 20:00 60 50 7 267 (W) 567 mstly cldy none 21:00 60 49 10 242 (WSW) 598 ptly cldy none 22:00 60 47 13 216 (SW) 623 mstly clr none 23:00 59 49 6 247 (WSW) 638 cloudy lt rain 00:00 58 50 7 249 (WSW) 619 ptly cldy none 01:00 58 52 6 275 (W) 637 mstly clr none 02:00 58 51 7 267 (W) 593 clear none 03:00 58 50 8 278 (W) 566 mstly cldy none 04:00 57 50 6 272 (W) 510 mstly clr none 05:00 57 48 8 269 (W) 530 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 1.2