Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 04:58:07 -0700 (MST) From: Jack Dembicky Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20070306 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Tuesday, March 06, 2007 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Klaene J.Dembicky, N.MacDonald SPIcam, S-H 16:00 04:00 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- EN01/O 18:58 05:31 0 1.5 0 0 1.8 7.3 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Dembicky Worked with N.MacDonald for the first half of the night getting data on the tertiary rotator. At midnight I was going to do a simple tracking test (since we had about 3 mins between exposures for Nic's tests) to see how much the star moved in position w/o moving anything else. I had problems using the echpoint for some reason. I noticed the Alt TCCPos and AxePos were slightly different (around 00:05) and a BadAzDTime (a hint that things were amiss). I did an axis stop/init as well as a couple large slews with the telescope to correct for any magnasensor errors. Nothing too significant was found on the Az, a couple (slightly larger than normal, but still arc sec) errors were found in Alt. When I tried echpoint again, the problem seemed to have been fixed. Marks focus test Procedure: Test 1 (check Russets 1350:50 NA2gdr to Focus) 1) Focus SPIcam to best focus & record, set focus to best SPIcam focus 2) Focus NA2guider (gfocus) to best focus @ SPIcam best focus & record 3) Move telescope focus (focus) up/down in steps of 25 & refocus NA2guider (gfocus) only & record best gfocus Test 2 (check NA2gdr focus repeatability) 1) Focus SPIcam to best focus & record, set focus to best SPIcam focus 2) Take several gfocus at SPIcam best focus & record 3) Focus SPIcam to best focus & record, see if best focus (focus) changed. Alt 73 deg Test 1 NA2gdr NA2 Seeing Time (focus) (gfocus) (arc sec) 0 best SPIcam 0.64 00:30 0 best -3871 0.67 -25 -3867 0.76 -50 -4564 0.68 -75 -5188 0.74 -100 -6541 0.71 -125 -7950 0.73 -125 -7289 0.82 -125 -7155 0.75 -100 -7206 0.74 -100 -6475 0.76 -75 -5759 0.71 -75 -5416 0.88 -50 -4554 0.78 -50 -4463 0.80 -25 -3418 0.84 -25 -3509 0.94 0 -2502 0.81 0 -2192 0.86 Test 2 -25 best SPIcam 0.88 01:05 -25 -4169 0.88 -25 -3411 0.74 -25 -3332 0.74 -25 -4825 0.88 -25 -4389 0.89 -25 -3752 0.87 -25 best SPIcam 0.83 01:18 -25 -4623 0.80 -25 -4234 0.78 -25 -4099 0.78 -25 -3884 0.77 -25 -4297 0.78 0 best SPIcam 0.72 01:31 -25 best SPIcam 0.76 01:34 +25 best SPIcam 0.80 01:37 0 best SPIcam 0.72 01:39 +25 best SPIcam 0.74 01:42 -25 best SPIcam 0.97 01:50 -25 -4414 0.99 01:51 0 best SPIcam 0.96 01:54 0 -4975 0.76 01:55 0 best SPIcam 0.92 01:59 0 -3554 0.95 02:00 0 best SPIcam 0.86 02:04 0 -3470 0.72 02:05 -25 bset SPIcam 0.83 02:08 -25 -4677 0.77 02:09 I'm jot sure how reliable the NA2guider stage is at giving reproducable results from all of this. The stepper motor may not be accurate enough for an eventual auto-guider. S-H data collected (temps were pretty constant at approx 6.0C) 8.0 mag star at AZ 8.4 Alt 56.8 deg Mir 95-97 were the first "good" set of S-H images. Of course clouds were forming on us as I was taking the data. I used 90 second exposures to get enough signal (6k with the clouds). Mir 98-100 were the next set of exposures (Az -2.3 Alt 57), clouds came in on the last image (100), again 90s exp Mir 101-103 (Az -14.1 Alt 56.2), same as above this time with a few less clouds, again 90s, this time cts 11k Mir104-105 (Az 1 Alt 46), 60 sec exp this time. Clouds again were dimming the star. Probably not very useful data. By 04:00 there were too many clouds to do much of anything useful anymore. The last item I checked was the mkecammask and mkdcammask routines (for Craig). When I attempted to create a new ecam mask (per Craig) and got the following error when I called the mkecammask [tron@hven UT070307]$ mkecammask e0045.fits e0046.fits e0047.fits /tmp/emask.fits 0.6 IDL Version 6.2 (linux x86_64 m64). (c) 2005, Research Systems, Inc. Installation number: 96636-4. Licensed for use by: Apache Point Observatory, NMSU % Attempt to call undefined procedure/function: 'MKCAMMASK'. % Execution halted at: $MAIN$ Looks like something is broke or I did something stupid in the wee hours of the morning. mkdcammask produced a similiar result (although I cheated and just pushed the echelle data in for the dis slit data, that would have probably broke it in other bad ways (which I was supposed to try!)). ------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:10 Echelle 13(-697) 34 81 7.1 9.1 7.8 7.6 7.3 ND1 0.8 20:50 SPIcam 0(195) -19 74 6.9 -- 6.2 6.5 6.4 r' 0.82 21:07 NA2gdr -2203(30796) -25 73 6.6 -- 6.0 6.4 6.4 R 0.91 00:25 SPIcam 0(270) -18 73 6.3 6.2 5.6 5.9 6.3 r' 0.64 00:33 NA2gdr -3871(29128) -21 73 5.9 6.2 5.6 5.8 6.1 R 0.67 01:06 SPIcam -25(143) -43 69 6.4 6.1 5.5 5.7 6.3 r' 0.88 01:07 NA2gdr -4169(28830) -43 69 6.8 6.1 5.5 6.7 6.4 R 0.88 02:44 S-H -150(572) 13 58 5.9 5.9 5.3 5.5 5.9 -- 1.0 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:00 50 -5 8 9 (N) 321 clear none 16:59 49 -2 3 94 (E) 513 clear none 18:00 47 -4 5 26 (NNE) 399 clear none 19:00 45 -1 7 20 (NNE) 507 Pt. Cldy none 20:00 44 0 1 98 (E) 519 Pt. Cldy none 20:59 44 2 2 139 (SE) 539 Pt. Cldy none 21:00 44 2 2 139 (SE) 539 Pt. Cldy none 22:00 46 5 4 273 (W) 682 Pt. Cldy none 23:00 44 7 2 218 (SW) 680 Pt. Cldy none 00:00 44 3 3 280 (W) 720 Pt. Cldy none 01:00 43 9 1 154 (SSE) 747 Pt. Cldy none 01:59 43 8 4 22 (NNE) 742 Pt. Cldy none 03:00 42 8 5 22 (NNE) 757 Pt. Cldy none 04:00 42 8 10 9 (N) 858 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: 2.9.0 Current TUI version: TUI 1.3