Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20081112 Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:00:05 +0000 (UTC) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, November 12, 2008 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Klaene B.Ketzeback Nicfps, 17:15 22:50 Fastcam T.Murphy R.McMillan APOLLO 22:50 00:10 M.Klaene B.Ketzeback SH,Guider 00:10 06:00 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EN01/W 17:59 23:00 0 0 0 0 0 5.0 0 0 0 DD01/R 23:00 00:00 0 0 0 0 0 1.0 0 0 0 EN01/W 00:00 05:36 0 0 0 0 0 5.6 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback During afternoon checkout I zero'ed the NA2 rotator. Installed Altitude data after todays AZ and ALT remaps. DIS Blue ion pump current is still runing very high this afternoon. AZ Vel Scale was 580.0 measured 580.2, 578.9; 579.5 No change ALT Vel Scale was -637.0 measured -636.6,-637.9;-637.7 No change Started the evening getting focus offset data for each of the Nicfps narrow bandpass filters compared to relevant broadband passes for our documentation. Spent about 90 minutes collecting Fastcam data before turning the telescope over to the APOLLO crew. After APOLLO, Russet and I spent some time tuning the azimuth parameters. We checked tracking stability in some of the trouble spots around the sky and found it was quite good, even in the NW where observers had reported elongated images with NIC-FPS just the previous night. We did find that damping of perturbations (both from offsets and windshake) was rather slow, so that might account for what was seen with NIC-FPS. We made a modest change in the POS.ERR.SCALE parameter which improved the damping and appeared to have no adverse effect on other tracking or slewing characteristics. Since unperturbed tracking was stable, we didn't adjust the other tune parameters. This won't completely eliminate problems at the azimuth direction reversal, which is always challenging for the drives, but it should mean that observers can work closer to the reversal position with fewer problems. Next I measured collimation with the shack hartmann and made a small change. I found that the Frt/Bak recommendations were again backwards. I corrected the setting in the sensoft software. Obs-specs should be aware that this may be a potential problem with future measurements and should keep the sign of the recommendation for Frt/Bak does not seem right. I was also able to correct the problem Russet was having with the display of too many plots. I unchecked the setting in preferences that was displaying plots for all the zenikes. I then saved the settings to a file. It is not clear if the program reverted back to the setting of 3 months ago or the change I made last month just was not saved properly. Due to the earlier drive tuning I made another check of the Azimuth velocity scales. AZ Vel Scale was 580.0 measured 578.3, 576.9; 577.6 No change Finally I got a new pointing model (116 points) which looked about as good as the ast two months, so I implemented it. 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:27 NICFPS -8( 298) 8 79 0.8 2.2 1.4 1.3 0.9 Ks 0.93 18:30 NICFPS -32( 270) 4 79 0.8 2.1 1.4 1.2 0.8 Ks 0.80 18:34 NICFPS -31( 265) 0 79 0.7 2.0 1.3 1.1 0.8 H2-2.25 0.81 18:36 NICFPS -41( 247) -4 79 0.8 1.9 1.3 1.1 0.8 Ks 0.81 18:40 NICFPS -31( 256) -8 79 0.9 1.8 1.4 1.0 0.9 H2r-2.13 0.73 18:44 NICFPS -61( 224) -13 79 1.1 1.8 1.4 0.9 1.0 Ks 0.65 18:51 NICFPS -47( 233) -21 79 1.1 1.7 1.4 0.9 1.0 H2-2.12 0.68 18:56 NICFPS -74( 201) -26 78 1.1 1.6 1.4 0.9 1.0 Ks 0.68 19:02 NICFPS -79( 194) -33 78 1.0 1.5 1.3 0.8 1.0 BrGr-2.17 0.76 19:07 NICFPS -74( 196) -37 77 1.1 1.5 1.3 0.8 1.0 Ks 0.77 19:13 NICFPS -81( 185) -42 76 1.0 1.4 1.3 0.8 1.0 BrG-2.16 0.85 19:21 NICFPS -95( 167) -48 75 1.1 1.3 1.3 0.7 0.9 Ks 0.83 19:26 NICFPS -74( 187) -51 74 1.1 1.3 1.3 0.7 1.0 H 0.71 19:30 NICFPS -57( 203) -53 74 1.1 1.2 1.3 0.7 1.0 FeII-1.65 0.87 19:34 NICFPS -77( 182) -55 73 1.1 1.2 1.3 0.6 1.0 H 0.74 19:39 NICFPS -51( 206) -57 72 1.0 1.2 1.3 0.6 1.0 FeII-1.64 0.76 19:49 NICFPS -74( 181) -62 70 1.2 1.1 1.3 0.6 1.1 H 0.79 19:53 NICFPS -51( 203) -64 69 1.3 1.1 1.3 0.6 1.1 FeII-1.60 0.70 20:01 NICFPS -75( 178) -67 68 1.3 1.1 1.3 0.6 1.1 H 0.89 20:07 NICFPS -56( 196) -68 67 1.2 1.1 1.3 0.6 1.1 J 0.96 20:12 NICFPS -27( 225) -70 66 1.2 1.0 1.3 0.6 1.1 FeII-1.26 1.06 20:17 NICFPS -47( 206) -72 65 1.4 1.0 1.3 0.6 1.1 J 0.75 20:23 NICFPS -97( 156) -73 63 1.4 1.0 1.3 0.6 1.2 Ks 0.74 20:29 NICFPS -49( 204) -75 62 1.4 1.0 1.4 0.7 1.2 SiVI-1.97 0.88 20:33 NICFPS -41( 214) -75 62 1.4 1.0 1.4 0.8 1.2 J 1.05 20:37 NICFPS -77( 178) -77 61 1.4 1.0 1.3 0.8 1.2 Ks 0.79 20:43 NICFPS -53( 203) -78 59 1.4 1.0 1.4 0.8 1.2 SiVI-1.96 0.96 20:44 NICFPS -53( 203) -78 59 1.5 1.0 1.4 0.8 1.2 SiVI-1.96 0.83 20:49 NICFPS -42( 217) -79 58 1.6 1.1 1.5 0.9 1.4 J 0.90 20:53 NICFPS -59( 199) -80 57 1.5 1.1 1.4 0.8 1.4 H 0.80 20:58 NICFPS -69( 191) -81 56 1.6 1.1 1.4 0.8 1.3 K 0.79 21:03 NICFPS -73( 189) -82 55 1.6 1.1 1.5 0.9 1.4 K 0.95 21:15 NICFPS -70( 180) -44 76 1.7 1.1 1.5 0.9 1.4 K 1.12 22:42 FASTCAM 100( 470) 282 77 2.0 1.5 1.8 1.3 1.6 -- 1.50 23:58 APOLLO -25( 556) 69 56 1.7 1.5 1.7 1.2 1.4 530nm 1.40 02:18 SHACK -175( 309) 101 53 2.0 1.5 1.9 1.3 1.7 -- 1.20 02:40 SHACK -240( 237) 99 58 1.9 1.4 1.8 1.1 1.6 -- 1.20 04:15 GUIDER 193( 133) 20 79 3.3 1.9 2.6 1.8 2.7 R+nd2 1.17 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 36 20 13 23 (NNE) 306 clear none 17:00 34 18 7 19 (NNE) 793 clear none 18:00 34 18 19 11 (N) 252 clear none 19:00 34 18 27 7 (N) 257 ptly cldy none 20:00 35 18 24 2 (N) 220 mstly clr none 21:00 35 19 22 8 (N) 264 mstly cldy none 22:00 36 19 12 57 (ENE) 300 mstly clr none 23:00 35 19 21 22 (NNE) 350 mstly clr none 00:00 34 19 17 9 (N) 358 clear none 01:00 36 19 14 1 (N) 335 clear none 02:00 35 20 23 17 (NNE) 241 mstly clr none 03:00 38 18 24 25 (NNE) 167 ptly cldy none 04:00 36 19 19 24 (NNE) 144 mstly cldy none 05:00 36 20 18 4 (N) 447 mstly cldy 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