Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20070216 Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2007 07:34:26 -0700 (MST) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu (Bill Ketzeback) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Friday, February 16, 2007 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- Q.Hart Q.Hart DIS --:-- --:-- SPIcam 02:30 03:30 DIS 03:45 06:30 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- CU01/R 18:44 05:51 7.7 0 0 0 3.4 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st half Observing Specialist: G.Saurage Multiple power fluctuations before sunset. One of the fluctuations happened during a test slew. This abruptly halted the telescope and caused the dome and the scope to become misaligned. After pushing the telescope off the dome and resetting everything the mirror covers would not respond to remote commands. Toggling the controller from auto to manual and back again got things back on track. Every time the power tried to go back to utility power it would trigger the encl collision stop switch and put the mirror covers back in manual (as well as set off the fire alarm and sometimes other system alarms). These fluctuations were happening every 15 mins. After talking to Mark Klaene it was clear what was the problem. The generator was set to return to utility power every 15 min, and each time it would attempt to switch to utility power, fail, and then switch back to generator power. Mark told me how to extend this interval, but unfortunately the longest setting is only 30 mins. I set it to 30 minutes with the plan to switch entirely over to generator power if weather conditions improved such that we could open. I let it continue to try to get back online in the hopes that utility power would be restored at some point during the night and we would not need to be on generator power at all. High winds (Im guessing gusts around 35-40 mph) were blowing snow level with the dome. While in the dome I could hear the hiss of snow being thrown against the enclosure. The COSMIC weather station reported gusts of 26-32 mph at near ground level. 2nd half Observing Specialist: W.Ketzeback By 0130 Otereo County Electric had restored site utility power and we switched from generator to utility power for the remainder of the night. The winds calmed some around 0200 however since we had not been ventillating I felt the telescope optics were still too warm to open due to risk of blowing snow from wind gusts. After ventillating for 30 minutes I felt it was OK to open although I was measuring wind speeds with the hand held anemometer of 23 - 29 mph. Seeing was quite poor at greater than 2 - 2.5 arcseconds. The observer attempted to image with SPIcam and after an hour realized it was not much use. There was a request to switch back to DIS at this time. Using the hand held anemometer I periodically checked the wind speeds out on the 3.5m catwalk. Measurements resulted in 23 - 30 mph for the rest of the night. There was lots of blowing snow at the ground level but I could find little evidence of snow at the observing level. Since the telescope optics had all reached a temperature below freezing I elected to stay open for the remainder of the night. I spent the first part of second half testing the TUI to XEPhem software written by Matt Nelson at UVa. I sent Matt some bug reports. I was also able to do some testing of the telmech actor in TUI and sent a list of problems to Russell and Fritz. ------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 02:37 SPIcam -150(-226) 141 74 -0.1 -0.1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.3 r 1.7 02:46 NA2gdr -1787(31212) 303 66 -0.2 -0.1 -0.8 -0.7 -0.2 clear 1.9 03:25 SPIcam -60(-120) 278 42 -0.7 -0.6 -1.1 -1.0 -0.7 i 2.2 03:55 dis-slit -51(-298) 270 77 -0.9 -0.8 -1.3 -1.2 -0.7 - 3.6 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 15:57 36 18 ?? 106 clear none 16:57 37 17 ?? 168 clear none 17:57 35 18 ?? 165 clear none 18:57 36 18 ?? 180 clear none 19:57 35 20 ?? 202 clear none 20:57 35 20 ?? 183 clear none 21:57 34 20 ?? 183 clear none 22:57 33 18 ?? 240 clear none 23:57 33 18 ?? 166 clear none 00:57 32 14 ?? 160 clear none 01:57 32 11 ?? 106 clear none 02:57 31 10 ?? 134 clear none 03:57 31 11 ?? 193 clear none 04:57 31 11 ?? 127 clear none 05:57 30 7 ?? 156 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: 2.8.5 Current TUI version: TUI 1.2