From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20060918 Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 06:35:41 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Monday, September 18, 2006 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Klaene R.McMillan,G.Saurage SPIcam,S-H, 22:30 06:30 NA2gdr INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- EN01/W 19:59 05:57 0 0 0 0 8.2 1.8 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialists: R.McMillan,G.Saurage The telescope was once again taken apart during the day, and reassembly took longer than expected, so we were on the sky a bit late. We used SPIcam to establish the new focus (very close to center of travel -- excellent work!), then went straight to the Shack-Hartmann and spent many hours watching the telescope cool at more or less constant altitude. This turns out to be more interesting than watching paint dry, but only because the software is so touchy. After constant altitude with varying temperature, I tried for some more sweeps of varying altitude with constant temperature (a repeat of work done the last two nights, but needed because of the new work done on the telescope). Unfortunately, the temperature continued to vary a bit and the wind followed me around the sky to make it difficult for me to get targets at low altitude, but I did manage two altitude sweeps done by 5 am. Then I spent the next hour and a half plotting the data to get algorithms for focus vs. temperature (which turns out to be a much steeper function than the old top end, I'm not sure why -- maybe it's related to some of the temp sensors we don't have yet), focus vs. altitude (which looks different from last night and may still need refining), and translation vs. altitude (very noisy plots, or maybe there's another source of variation I'm not taking into account). Last thing in the morning I implemented my new algorithms, told the TCC it was okay to translate the secondary (which had previously been fixed in translation), and moved around the sky a little to make sure it didn't do anything stupid. Unfortunately, it was already too bright to get more S-H data, so testing the new algorithms will be a job for tomorrow night. I did accomplish one thing other than Shack-Hartmann work: I adjusted the tracking parameters for the altitude axis, and it appears better behaved at high altitude now, although I didn't test it rigorously (just incidentally as I was taking more Shack-Hartmann data). Altitude slews are still noisy despite the improvements in the telescope balance, and I think adjustment of slew parameters would help there. And the PMSS had trouble between altitude 35 and 40, but the obs-specs can relax it tomorrow evening when there are two of us to do the job. ------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 23:12 SPIcam -425(216) 130 59 10.1/10.9 24 14 r 0.93 23:16 NA2gdr -4000(31100)131 60 10.2/10.8 31 11 ND3 0.78 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 54 15 11 308 (NW) 253 clear none 17:00 51 11 4 280 (W) 205 clear none 18:00 50 13 4 12 (NNE) 309 clear none 19:00 48 14 10 7 (N) 267 clear none 20:00 48 3 7 13 (NNE) 270 clear none 21:00 51 5 8 3 (N) 257 clear none 22:00 51 5 12 30 (NNE) 267 clear none 23:00 50 6 13 31 (NNE) 266 clear none 00:00 52 7 18 24 (NNE) 260 clear none 01:00 50 7 5 10 (N) 299 clear none 02:00 51 6 8 37 (NE) 299 clear none 03:00 51 7 10 53 (NE) 303 clear none 04:00 49 5 2 169 (S) 281 clear none 05:00 49 5 3 180 (S) 339 clear none 06:00 48 5 3 179 (S) 279 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