From: Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20081023 Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:55:56 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, October 23, 2008 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- H.Chen H.Chen DIS 18:20 00:59 M.Shin M.Shin,M.Oguri DIS 01:02 06:05 T.Murphy R.McMillan APOLLO 06:10 06:55 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- UC01/R 19:15 01:00 0 0 0.1 0 5.6 0 0 0 0 PU02/R 01:00 06:06 0 0 0.1 0.1 2.0 2.9 0 0 0 DD01/O 06:06 07:06 0 0 0 0 0 0.3 0.7 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan A beautifully clear night with moderate to poor seeing. Borderline winds in late afternoon calmed around sunset, so we were able to open in time for cooling. The first slitviewer image of the night, during twilight, had the appearance of a possible shutter problem. But after that it behaved perfectly. This is typical of what we've seen in the borderline of the cold-weather shutter problems. Tonight was warmer than the previous night. We had several rotator "servo error too large" failures. The first of these, at 05:19, also included an alarming message about "one or more axes could not be halted, disable motors!" So I pressed a stop button accordingly, but when I tried to do the axis stop I got a message about could not connect to LTA5. A second axis stop attempt was successful, as was the subsequent init and slews. This failure did necessitate early readout of a long exposure, but the observers estimated that the spectrum was still usable so I only counted the recovery time. The second rotator failure occurred at 07:24 during setup on a target field, and "axis init rot" recovered it easily without messing up the pointing. The third failure occurred at 08:10 during a slew; again "axis init rot" worked, but there was another failure less than a minute later, making me wonder if the recovery wasn't as complete as I thought. But these cases didn't interfere much with data taking. APOLLO observations went smoothly, but afterward when I rotated the tertiary back to NA2 I got a "clamp failed to fully close error". When I looked at the status, the actual position was -200000 from the desired position. Rather than homing the mirror, I tried repeating the move from the command line, and this appeared to work correctly. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (STEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UC01 D T/H 23:19 23:23 rot servo error failure PU02 D T/H 01:24 01:27 rot servo error failure PU02 D T/H 02:10 02:16 rot servo error x2 ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:58 dis-slit 91( -39) 36 52 5.8 5.2 5.2 4.9 5.4 1.60 06:12 APOLLO -50( 748) 71 47 6.3 5.7 6.0 5.3 6.0 1.20 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 39 0 9 4 (N) 530 clear none 17:00 41 3 10 317 (NW) 490 clear none 18:00 42 2 12 345 (NNW) 570 clear none 19:00 43 3 15 352 (N) 558 clear none 20:00 43 3 9 333 (NNW) 617 clear none 21:00 42 2 20 316 (NW) 654 clear none 22:00 42 5 10 327 (NNW) 1716 clear none 23:00 42 6 11 323 (NW) 1123 clear none 00:00 42 6 4 7 (N) 1064 clear none 01:00 42 7 6 32 (NNE) 1045 clear none 02:00 42 7 12 22 (NNE) 648 clear none 03:00 43 8 14 333 (NNW) 377 clear none 04:00 43 9 14 0 (N) 591 clear none 05:00 43 9 14 24 (NNE) 436 clear none 06:00 44 10 14 17 (NNE) 220 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: 2.9.1 Current TUI version: TUI 1.5.1