From: Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20081102 Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 13:29:01 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Sunday, November 2, 2008 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- A.Riess B.Dilday DIS 18:55 00:45 R.Beaton J.Leisenring Tspec 01:15 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------- JH01/R 18:06 00:00 0 0 0 0 3.4 2.5 0 0 0 UV04/R 00:00 05:28 0 0 0.1 0 5.4 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan We had good seeing again tonight, but thin to medium high clouds for most of the night. The azimuth velocity scale hasn't finished settling; it was down to 580 tonight. I have hopes (perhaps unjustified) that it might stabilize and stop the frequent +-10 jumps that we've been seeing for a few months. Pointing with DIS was off a little more than we would like, but pretty consistent for multiple targets. Correcting pointing with tertiary tilts using the guider didn't make much of a difference for the pointing on DIS. I realized belatedly that the rotator had not been zeroed before Friday's pointing model, so this might explain the offset. Triplespec mounted without special difficulty tonight -- it wasn't easy, but not impossible either. Nick and I spent some time in the afternoon discussing what was wrong yesterday and we think the instrument was mis-positioned on its cart, possibly due to the events of Friday night. But we're not sure why it got better between Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, so that's still a mystery. After a successful test slew with Tspec, the observers' first slew to an object had a rotator servo error where the rotator actually overshot its position. I presume this was due to the perennial difficulty of balancing Tspec, but there were some puzzling details about the way the error was handled, so I sent some log quotes to Fritz. After the initial problem, there was no trouble wit subsequent slews. Clouds thickened after 4 am and the observers had to switch from their primary program to a backup plan, but they appeared to be getting usable data on the brighter objects. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UV04 T T/H 00:13 00:19 rot servo error/overshoot ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM ----------------------------------------------------------------- 18:58 dis-slit -202( -39) 21 56 8.9 11.3 10.0 9.8 9.2 - 1.06 01:32 TSPEC -15( 296) 70 74 8.0 8.4 8.6 7.6 8.1 K 0.89 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 51 17 5 260 (W) 476 mstly clr none 17:00 50 24 3 254 (WSW) 703 mstly clr none 18:00 48 24 8 231 (SW) 909 clear none 19:00 48 26 8 203 (SSW) 1043 clear none 20:00 48 25 9 199 (SSW) 1261 clear none 21:00 49 25 3 252 (WSW) 1061 ptly cldy none 22:00 50 25 9 254 (WSW) 990 ptly cldy none 23:00 49 25 12 239 (WSW) 1001 ptly cldy none 00:00 48 27 10 198 (SSW) 1775 mstly clr none 01:00 47 26 12 214 (SW) 1316 ptly cldy none 02:00 47 28 11 209 (SSW) 1276 ptly cldy none 03:00 47 28 10 209 (SSW) 1196 ptly cldy none 04:00 47 28 11 245 (WSW) 1168 ptly cldy none 05:00 48 30 10 288 (WNW) 1003 ptly cldy none 06:00 47 30 16 269 (W) 923 mstly clr 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