Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20071031 Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 07:32:15 -0700 (MST) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu (Bill Ketzeback) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, October 31, 2007 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- J.Bally J.Bally,A.Gingsburg, Echelle, 21:32 07:00 + 11 students DIS,Nicfps, Eyepiece INSTT SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- CU01/O 19:08 06:28 2.5 0 0 0.2 1.9 6.7 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback Azimuth Velocity Scales. Was 586. Measured 584.4, 587.8 Avg 586.1. No change made. Tonights observations were problem rich. First, during chekout I could not communicate with Spicam. The hub was reporting an error that I had never seen before regarding the PDF Controller. Later, it was learned this referred to the instrument Forth controller. After several attempts to bring it back to life John Brinkman and I pronouced it unusable for the night and the hopes it can be revived during the day. See PR693 for more details. While I was scrambling to fix Spicam and trying to get on sky I rotated the tertiary to NA1 and received the dreaded clamp would not close error message. I then attempted to home the tertiary several times and still the clamp would not close. I called Nick and he had me try to close the clamp "manually". This worked fine however when I went back to NA1 I again had the same error. We needed to close for high dust levels so Nick drove to the site and verified everything was working properly. By the end of twilight we were able to get on the sky and focus. For much of the rest of the night we were seeing strange trailing/image jumps on the echelle slitviewer at first and then on nicfps. The length of the trailed star would vary but it always appears that the star returned to its proper location before the exposure ended because more of the following exposures showed the star centered. It is also possible that the guiders were making huge corrections that I didnt spot. The trailing did not seem to be restricted to a particular part of the sky, azimuth or altitude. See PR694 for more details. The first few hour of the night the wind was from the east and seeing was horrific. By 2330 (when we switched to nicfps) seeing improved a from 3 to 5" to sub-arcsecond as seen by both nicfps and the na2 guider. Nicfps behaved beautifully when mounted at NA2 tonight until we moved the instrument outside a -45 to + 45 degree rotation. Then the rising background levels resumed for several more hours before they leveled off. No downtime was counted for the tertiary problem because we were closed at the time for weather. No downtime was counted for the trailing with echelle was counted because effect to data is difficult to determine. Trailing with Nicfps has 3 240s exposures affected. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UC01 S I/H --:-- --:-- Spicam PDF Controller not responding properly UC01 N T/H 00:15 00:29 Trailing of stars in azimuth direction ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM ----------------------------------------------------------------- 21:44 ECHELLE 175( -624) -12 72 2.2 4.7 6.2 3.2 3.1 nd2 3.2 23:49 NA2gdr -336(44764) -84 73 7.1 5.2 6.6 4.8 6.4 R+nd2 0.6 00:03 NICFPS -11( 567) -120 26 7.1 5.2 6.5 4.7 6.1 Ks 1.4 01:16 ECHELLE -136( -906) -163 76 6.6 5.4 6.3 4.7 5.6 nd2 0.9 03:33 dis-slit -149( -133) -121 74 5.4 5.1 5.5 4.1 4.8 - 1.1 05:00 Eyepiece -750( ) - 0.75 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 54 20 13 227 (SW) ptly cldy none 17:00 53 18 7 204 (SSW) ptly cldy none 18:00 48 18 8 180 (S) 597 ptly cldy none 19:00 41 26 10 75 (ENE) 3024 ptly cldy none 20:00 38 27 15 80 (E) 3458 clear none 21:00 37 26 12 81 (E) 2788 clear none 22:00 38 25 7 137 (SE) 2455 clear none 23:00 43 21 1 201 (SSW) 2277 clear none 00:00 45 21 10 217 (SW) 1376 ptly cldy none 01:00 44 21 11 225 (SW) 2589 ptly cldy none 02:00 43 22 9 234 (SW) 2753 ptly cldy none 03:00 43 23 7 185 (S) 2739 ptly cldy none 04:00 42 24 9 206 (SSW) 2980 ptly cldy none 05:00 42 22 7 210 (SSW) 2796 ptly cldy none 06:00 44 20 9 232 (SW) 2392 ptly cldy 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: 2.9.1 Current TUI version: TUI 1.4.1