From: Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20081101 Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 13:19:10 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Saturday, November 1, 2008 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- T.Yan T.Yan,Q.Hart NIC-FPS 18:55 00:55 M.Shin M.Shin,M.Oguri DIS 01:10 03:15 J.Leisenring J.Bary,J.Leisenring NIC-FPS 04:15 05:55 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- CU06/R 19:06 01:00 0 0 0.1 0 4.2 1.6 0 0 0 PU02/R 01:00 03:15 0 0 0 0 3.3 0 0 0 0 UV08/R/D 03:15 05:28 0 0 0.8 0 1.4 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan The night was mostly clear, with patchy clouds in the evening and good to excellent seeing throughout. The pointing model taken during morning twilight appeared viable, so I implemented it. Afternoon tests showed some signs that the lifetime of the azimuth drives may have been shortened by last night's balance problem, but they appear to be functional for now. Close attention to pointing and tracking will be important in the coming weeks. Tonight there was one case that appeared to be a change in pointing during first half, but after that it settled and was consistent. The azimuth velocity scale was 591 from last night; I changed it to 589 in the evening and then 585 for a re-measurement in the middle of first half when noise showed up on the telemetry. I counted a few minutes of downtime for this. The first-half observers had trouble stopping their dither scripts with the Cancel button; they got the error message that abort is not implemented yet. I thought this error occurred only when trying to abort an individual image, rather than stopping a script. A time trade was negotiated for part of second half in order to get simultaneous data with Gemini (observations scheduled with little advance notice). Accordingly, at 3:15 I went upstairs to change instruments to Tspec. An hour later I gave up and mounted NIC-FPS instead. I think there may be a problem with the way Tspec is sitting on its cart which makes it harder/impossible to mount; Nick will be in to look at this tomorrow. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CU06 N T/H 00:00 00:04 extra az vel scale check UV08 Tspec I/H 03:15 04:05 could not mount Tspec ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM ----------------------------------------------------------------- 19:12 NICFPS -86( 625) -114 47 8.7 10.0 9.4 8.7 8.7 MK-H 0.70 21:48 NICFPS -79( 532) -36 51 8.6 8.1 8.5 7.5 8.2 MK-J 0.83 01:20 dis-slit -35( -85) 51 59 7.9 7.0 7.4 6.3 7.2 - 1.19 05:51 NICFPS -65( 448) 266 49 7.0 6.0 6.4 4.8 6.0 J 0.70 05:58 NICFPS -75( 439) 266 47 7.2 6.0 6.4 4.8 6.1 Fe1.65 0.72 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 57 22 9 185 (S) 716 mstly clr none 17:00 54 17 14 206 (SSW) 649 mstly clr none 18:00 50 16 3 160 (SSE) 627 mstly clr none 19:00 48 14 11 146 (SE) 1030 mstly clr none 20:00 48 15 16 151 (SSE) 727 mstly clr none 21:00 47 14 9 180 (S) 941 clear none 22:00 48 16 14 178 (S) 778 clear none 23:00 48 17 13 178 (S) 866 clear none 00:00 45 21 13 152 (SSE) 1025 clear none 01:00 46 21 12 172 (S) 1105 clear none 01:00 47 17 8 179 (S) 770 clear none 02:00 44 19 8 181 (S) 779 clear none 03:00 43 23 8 186 (S) 755 clear none 04:00 44 26 7 181 (S) 912 clear none 05:00 45 24 4 189 (S) 835 clear none 06:00 45 23 4 183 (S) 843 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