From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20070425 Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 06:23:14 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, April 25, 2007 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Gladders M.Gladders NIC 19:30 00:56 A.Harper R.Evans NIC 00:57 06:05 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- UC03/R 20:37 01:00 0 0 0 0.1 0 4.3 0 0 0 UC04/R 01:00 05:25 0 0 0 0 1.8 2.6 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Lovely night ranging from mostly clear to photometric, very good to moderate seeing, no trouble with dust or wind or any of that stuff. NIC-FPS worked well, and the telescope worked reasonably well although I saw some very slight signs of azimuth tracking difficulties near a direction reversal -- noticeable, but not bad enough to have a serious impact on image quality. The NA2 guider was not working; the controller wouldn't respond to pings even after multiple power-cycles. This was not a serious hindrance to the NIC-FPS observations since none of the exposure times were very long. Nevertheless, Jon Brinkmann and I tried checking some cables to try to figure out what was wrong with the guider. In the process, we wiggled something that interrupted communication with the telescope and halted tracking; this cost a few minutes to recover from. When we reached the point that further guider diagnosis would require dismounting the instrument, I said it wasn't worth spending time on such a beautiful night. The guider will be worked on during the day tomorrow. The same interruption in telescope communications caused telescope temperatures to stop updating for a while, but Jon got them going again before focus was severely affected. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UC03 N T/S 20:42 20:48 NA2gdr prob halted tracking ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:15 NICFPS 25(634) 154 63 8.3 8.75 7.86 7.93 8.28 H 0.68 23:40 NICFPS -50(544) 62 49 7.6 7.35 6.85 7.18 7.53 H 0.85 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 48 19 1 5 (N) 213 mstly clr none 17:00 50 19 8 321 (NW) 207 mstly clr none 18:00 51 19 3 264 (W) 241 mstly clr none 19:00 50 21 8 273 (W) 208 mstly clr none 20:00 47 20 8 306 (NW) 202 mstly clr none 21:00 47 20 11 254 (WSW) 232 mstly clr none 22:00 47 19 14 227 (SW) 234 mstly clr none 23:00 45 18 11 208 (SSW) 273 clear none 00:00 46 18 13 181 (S) 292 clear none 01:00 46 14 12 223 (SW) 365 clear none 02:00 47 15 11 189 (S) 364 clear none 03:00 46 15 10 223 (SW) 399 clear none 04:00 47 15 15 219 (SW) 361 clear none 05:00 46 17 16 212 (SSW) 374 clear none 06:00 44 17 15 191 (S) 334 mstly clr 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