From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20070409 Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 06:59:28 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Monday, April 9, 2007 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- A.Verbiscer A.Verbiscer SPIcam 23:35 00:56 A.Harper R.Evans,A.Harper NIC-FPS 01:12 06:20 T.Murphy R.McMillan APOLLO --:-- --:-- INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- UV01/R 20:24 01:00 3.2 0 0 0 1.4 0 0 0 0 UC04/R 01:00 05:26 0.2 0.8 0 0 1.0 2.4 0 0 0 DD01/O 05:26 06:32 0 0 0 0.3 0 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Rain and thunder and high humidity kept us closed at sunset. Then clouds and borderline humidity for a while. Then finally the clouds cleared off and we opened after 23:00. Everything went smoothly with SPIcam; seeing was mediocre but not really bad. There were a few cases of images elongated in the azimuth direction when we were tracking very low down in the west; this was a known trouble spot from before, and work done on the tracking last week at least improved it to the point where the images were consistently reducible. After the instrument change to NIC-FPS, the first field we went to (where I focused, with difficulty) had terrible tracking problems. I spent an inexcusably long time mulling this over before figuring out that there had been a bad magnesensor crossing on the first slew, so pointingg and tracking were both off. Subsequent checks in the same part of the sky confirmed that tracking was fine there when the magnesensor readings were reasonable. About an hour was lost to clouds during this period. While I was checking out APOLLO, I discovered a problem with the laser interlock system. Despite much scrambling around on the observing and intermediate levels, I couldn't find a fix for this in time, so I gave the APOLLO time over to the other second-half observer. Daytime work by myself or observatory daystaff will be required to resolve the problem. During the last couple of hours of the night, humidity rose very close to the limit but didn't quite get there until just before sunrise. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DD01 A I/H 05:26 05:45 APOLLO interlocks broken ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 23:44 SPIcam -200(139) 71 61 3.7 4.23 3.95 4.14 3.72 R 1.33 00:20 NICFPS -250(440) -140 60 3.4 3.40 3.02 3.33 3.47 J 1.2 03:00 NICFPS 14(440) -107 65 3.3 3.27 2.78 3.14 3.28 J 0.91 04:35 NICFPS 3(414) -110 46 2.4 2.43 2.06 2.33 2.38 J 1.1 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 35 35 22 330 (NNW) 2665 cloudy rain 17:00 35 35 17 328 (NNW) 4218 cloudy lt rain 18:00 37 34 30 291 (WNW) 1721 cloudy lt rain 19:00 39 35 22 300 (WNW) 1695 cloudy humid 20:00 39 34 19 283 (WNW) 1810 cloudy humid 21:00 40 34 26 295 (WNW) 1953 mstly cldy none 22:00 40 34 22 289 (WNW) 1931 mstly cldy none 23:00 40 33 18 271 (W) 2048 ptly cldy none 00:00 39 33 15 290 (WNW) 2161 ptly cldy none 01:00 38 32 26 291 (WNW) 2280 ptly cldy none 02:00 38 32 17 298 (WNW) 2432 mstly cldy none 03:00 38 32 21 306 (NW) 2428 mstly cldy none 04:00 37 32 13 301 (WNW) 2569 mstly clr none 05:00 36 32 15 292 (WNW) 2592 clear none 06:00 36 31 14 292 (WNW) 2603 clear humid 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