From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20070703 Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2007 05:55:33 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Tuesday, July 3, 2007 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- P.Strycker P.Strycker,B.Kodali, NAIC 20:15 00:55 C.Miller A.Harper R.Evans NIC-FPS 01:15 05:10 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- NM01/O 21:18 01:05 0 0 0 0 1.5 2.3 0 0 0 UC06/R 01:05 04:57 0 0 0 0 0 3.9 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialists: R.McMillan AZ Velocity Scales: Checkout - (temp ~20) 577.6 Changeover - (temp ~16) 576.8 We had some rain in the late afternoon, but skies were unexpectedly clear at sunset. We got lots of data in moderate seeing conditions. Wind went over the limit for a while, but I told the observers I was willing to push it in the current position since it wasn't putting a strain on the telescope. It never went too far over the limit, so we stayed open. Second half continued with so-so seeing, and some patchy clouds moved in toward the end of the night. Around midnight, there was a critical alert because the DIS temperatures were very unrealistic -- +150 C for blue, -243 C for red. I found the Lakeshore temperature controller in a very unhappy state, unresponsive to button presses or powerr cycles. Both ion pumps were fine, both cryotigers were humming along happily, and 15-minute darks looked normal with both chips. So the assumption is the actual temperatures are fine, but we might need a new Lakeshore unit in order to get real measurements. I didn't witness any misbehavior of louvers tonight, but I wasn't in a position to catch it all night -- part of the time I had the louvers closed due to borderline dust, and part of the time I turned off the intercom to the dome because the noise of the wind was too annoying. I did listen for several hours and didn't hear any problems, though. We appear to have had a pointing jump in the last few days of about an arcminute. I noted this last night with APOLLO and was waiting for another APOLLO run to see if it repeated -- then tonight when making a pointing correction for NAIC, I found that we were off by a similar amount at NA2. So the next time the echelle is used, a large correction may be needed there as well. Once the correction was made (by tilting the tertiary), pointing and tracking seemed quite good tonight; in fact, the NAIC observers commented on that specifically. ------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:25 NAIC -25(900) 46 56 18.4 20.22 19.73 20.09 18.69 738nm 1.1 21:30 NAIC -150(705) -17 56 16.4 17.83 17.99 18.35 16.47 738nm 1.3 01:25 NICFPS 13(996) 170 56 16.5 15.09 14.40 15.61 16.03 J 1.0 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 1.3