Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2006 07:12:40 -0600 (MDT) From: Jack Dembicky Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20060929 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Friday, September 29, 2006 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- N.Silvestri S.Vennes DIS 18:40 00:54 Q.Hart Q.Hart SPIcam 00:54 07:10 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- UW08/R 19:44 01:10 0 0 0 0 1.7 3.7 0 0 0 CU02/R 01:10 06:04 0 0 0 0 4.9 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Dembicky SPIcam temp was at 183.5K during evening checkout. 179.5K at midnight During checkout, I also noticed that the Echelle didn't seem to be using much LN2 (I filled it yesterday). It should have been around 7/8-3/4 by tonight but was still full. The tank pressure was at 9PSI. As I was asking Russet about it the Echelle started its fill cycle. I noticed that the ccd line was cold but the shield line was warm (no LN2 flowing). Russet did some checking and found that the shield had not been filling correctly and the CCD was warmer than it should be (although it didn't look like it was contaminated from a test image). She consulted with Craig and found that the echelle shield has not been filling correctly for the last 10 fill cycles. Inspection of the ion pump showed it pegged and we had to take the Echelle offline for Mark to pump on it. Our guess is a bad fill sensor is tripping as soon as the LN2 starts to flow into the shield side. The night started out with some cirrus in the sky but cleared (well, it looked that way, the cloudcam scaling isn't correct at the moment so it was hard to tell). We had some brief clouds again around 03:00. When focusing SPIcam at 01:16 the transverse load cell on the primary was very unhappy (46.6 alt). A load cell was a little unhappy as well (B and C looked fine). I did a couple slews in alt (I noticed a bump in all 4 cells about 3-4 sec before the first slew down to 10 deg alt stopped, that seemed to settle the transverse cell, but the bump was on all cells). The mirror seemed happy at 10 deg and 84 deg but not at 47 deg (transverse cell very unhappy). Telescope (transverse cell) seemed unhappy between 55-12 deg. I physically went up to the dome to move the telescope to the alt limits but didn't see much of an improvement from that either. The load cells T and C were unhappy at 58 deg at 02:25 and then at 02:31 all was fine (very quiet). The Az did transit about this time. Not sure if that mattered. I will investigate further at the end of the night. We saw a little image elongation in some SPIcam images. The load cells all looked normal (fine) and it would change between exposures from elongation to circular (30s images). Some image appeared to be elongated in the Az direction, but I am not sure if that was the preferential direction of motion or not. I couldn't see anything funny on the Dataq and the wind was less than 5MPH. I also noticed image elongation on a couple of the stars during the focus sweep. NA2 guider froze at 04:19, I restarted the gcamera and gcam and that seemed to take care of the problem. At 04:46 my observer again reported some image elongation in their images. Again it appeared to be in azimuth. We were at about 79 deg alt this time. Again at 04:57 the observer reported elongated images, again in the azimuth direction. The images were a little out of focus (astigmatism?). Elongated images again at 05:41, this time we were in focus though but at high altitude. The motor 1 and motor 2 currents were pretty noisy during (track mount) slews at the end of the night. Looked like it came came out of PID(?) loop and stayed that way. This caused load cells B & C to oscillate as well during the slew. I will re-measure velocity scales for both axis tommorow evening. Russet will relax the mirrors to try to get rid of the noise in the T cell today. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:16 DISslit -200(-55) 42 74 11.6 13.7 12.4 13.3 11.4 -- 1.6 21:23 DISslit -75(-37) 72 65 12.2 12.4 11.7 12.4 11.3 -- 0.8 01:08 SPIcam 25(200) -30 48 12.2 11.8 11.3 11.9 11.9 r' 1.0 01:14 NA2guider -4372(28627) -32 47 12.1 11.8 11.3 11.9 11.9 R 0.86 03:26 SPIcam 75(207) -20 41 12.5 11.4 10.7 11.3 11.8 r' 0.9 05:03 SPIcam 75 2 63 12.6 11.5 10.9 11.5 12.2 r' 0.84 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 58 27 6 274 (W) 583 Cirrus none 17:00 57 31 9 293 (WNW) 583 Cirrus none 18:00 54 32 4 296 (WNW) 700 Cirrus none 19:00 54 29 7 4 (N) 712 Cirrus none 20:00 54 28 7 344 (NNW) 583 Cirrus none 21:00 54 27 3 284 (WNW) 581 Cirrus none 22:00 52 22 3 261 (W) 435 Cirrus none 23:00 53 24 5 266 (W) 442 Cirrus none 00:00 55 23 2 263 (W) 488 Clear none 01:00 54 24 4 222 (SW) 527 Clear none 02:00 54 23 1 158 (SSE) 575 Clear none 03:00 55 19 2 258 (WSW) 431 Cirrus none 04:00 55 17 1 257 (WSW) 367 Cirrus none 05:00 56 19 2 285 (WNW) 438 Cirrus none 06:00 53 19 5 348 (NNW) 358 Cirrus 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