Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:50:33 -0700 (MST) From: Jack Dembicky Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20080219 Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Tuesday, February 19, 2008 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Klaene J.Dembicky SPIcam, FASTCAM 18:00 00:06 A.Zirm K.Chiu NICFPS 00:15 05:56 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 18:46 00:10 0 0 0 0 0 5.4 0 0 0 DD06/R 00:10 05:48 0 0 0 0 0 5.6 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialists: J. Dembicky I zero'ed the rotator at the start of the night. It was off by 0.005 deg. I think Fritz was messing around with it earlier in the day as well. A few pesky clouds slowed me focusing the telescope down at the start of the night. I think I found an obscure bug in the SPIcam focus script (maybe others). My focus sweep ended but the final (best focus) star came up as NaN. The telescope focus reverted back to the last (focus 5) value instead of what it thought was the best fit focus. Should probably try to repeat this but not sure how. A couple notes about the SPIcam find routine. It still seems to be non-preferential toward stars. From what I could tell it seems to lock onto stars with counts (when in focus) of around 15000 or so. We can actually go much dimmer than this (of course this might depend upon seeing, which was excellent and very stable tonight). I would say stars in the 1000-3000 cts probably will work fine for focusing, and give many more targets for the find routine to deal with. Other Obs specs may also have some comments on how dim of a star they use but I think the find routine is using some pretty bright stars yet and that may be limiting the number of stars available in the field to select from. LOTS of gmech vs. focus data tonight. I did a incrementing and decrementing sweep. Unfortunately the temperature was pretty stable, but the seeing was very stable with excellent seeing. Note for Bill st5. is actually at 50deg alt, st6. I took at 60deg alt. I took some more focus data after I finished with Bill's fastcam stuff (I had about 35 mins left and not enought time to really get another sweep of stars for Bill). I had some problems getting the secondary focus increment drop down to work (TUI 1.4.5 MacOSX 10.5). Sometimes it worked, other times not. The drop down was disconnected (and appeared on another region of my monitor). I think this problem has already been reported in prior TUI/MAC versions so I didn't submit a PR, but it still seems to be around. This is the first time I have seen it on Mac OSX 10.5. Russell, The NICFPS focus script defaults to an exp time of 5 sec, unfortunately that is too short for FS8, which users are requested to use. Please increase the default exp time for the focus script to 6 sec. PR Submitted NICFPS auto find picked out a glint (bight streak) on the nicfps image and tried focusing on that. See image /export/images/Q1APO/UT080220/nicfps_focus.0098 pixels (955,354). I manually had to choose a better star. NA2 guider focus script sometimes picks stars too close to the edge of the field (like 5 pixels away). Probably shouldn't select anything less than say 10 pixels away) No problems 2nd half At the end of the night I rotated the instrument several times to near limits, before checking how much it was off from the zero that I set at the start of the night. I didn't get a chance to rotate the instrument last night to check if this affects anything. 4 full rotations from -269 to +269. Zero'ed rotator at end of night. Off by 0.095 ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SAEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:07 SPIcam -17(55) 63 67 2.8 4.6 4.4 3.4 3.4 r' 0.90 19:09 NA2gdr -17(30249) 62 67 2.9 4.6 4.3 3.4 3.3 R 0.79 19:16 SPIcam -13(53) 59 68 3.1 4.4 4.3 3.3 3.3 r' 0.99 19:17 NA2gdr -13(30661) 59 68 3.0 4.4 4.3 3.3 3.3 R 0.78 19:34 SPIcam -43(5) 51 71 3.1 4.1 4.1 3.1 3.3 r' 0.83 19:39 NA2gdr -43(29444) 48 72 2.9 4.1 4.0 3.1 3.3 R 0.82 19:41 SPIcam -30(13) 46 73 3.1 4.1 4.0 3.1 3.3 r' 0.68 19:47 NA2gdr -30(29712) 44 73 3.2 4.0 4.0 3.1 3.3 R 0.81 20:08 SPIcam -4(24) 27 76 3.8 3.7 3.9 3.1 3.6 r' 0.65 20:13 NA2gdr -4(29528) 23 76 3.7 3.7 3.9 3.1 3.6 R 0.75 20:14 NA2gdr -204(22474) 21 77 3.9 3.7 3.9 3.1 3.6 R 0.77 20:18 NA2gdr -154(24170) 18 77 4.0 3.7 3.9 3.2 3.6 R 0.70 20:22 NA2gdr -104(25896) 17 77 4.0 3.7 4.0 3.3 3.8 R 0.68 20:24 NA2gdr -54(27594) 12 77 4.0 3.7 4.0 3.3 3.8 R 0.63 20:25 NA2gdr -4(29132) 11 77 4.0 3.7 4.0 3.3 3.8 R 0.68 20:27 NA2gdr 46(34132) 8 77 3.9 3.6 4.0 3.3 3.8 R 0.73 20:31 NA2gdr 96(32771) 5 77 4.1 3.6 4.0 3.3 3.7 R 0.79 20:32 NA2gdr 146(34421) 3 77 4.1 3.6 4.0 3.3 3.7 R 0.70 20:34 NA2gdr 196(36158) 2 77 4.1 3.6 4.0 3.3 3.8 R 0.70 20:35 NA2gdr -4(29047) 0 77 4.1 3.7 4.0 3.3 3.8 R 0.74 20:38 SPIcam 25(49) -3 77 4.1 3.6 4.0 3.3 3.8 r' 0.60 moved telescope focus +200 steps and then back 20:43 SPIcam 32(57) -8 77 4.2 3.7 4.0 3.3 3.8 r' 0.71 moved telescope focus -200 steps and then back 20:48 SPIcam 31(55) -13 77 4.0 3.6 4.0 3.3 3.8 r' 0.64 20:52 NA2gdr 31(29695) -17 77 4.0 3.7 4.0 3.4 3.9 R 0.63 20:53 NA2gdr 231(36695) -19 77 4.1 3.6 4.0 3.4 3.9 R 0.75 20:55 NA2gdr 181(34756) -20 77 4.0 3.7 4.1 3.4 3.9 R 0.69 20:57 NA2gdr 131(33193) -22 76 4.0 3.6 4.1 3.4 3.9 R 0.74 20:59 NA2gdr 81(31080) -24 76 4.0 3.7 4.0 3.4 3.9 R 0.68 21:00 NA2gdr 31(29601) -25 76 4.2 3.7 4.0 3.4 3.9 R 0.67 21:01 NA2gdr -19(27620) -26 76 4.2 3.7 4.1 3.4 3.9 R 0.76 21:03 NA2gdr -69(26165) -27 76 4.2 3.7 4.1 3.5 4.1 R 0.81 21:04 NA2gdr -119(24314) -28 76 4.1 3.7 4.1 3.5 4.1 R 0.68 21:05 NA2gdr -169(22600) -29 76 4.1 3.7 4.1 3.5 4.0 R 0.68 21:07 NA2gdr 31(29428) -31 76 4.2 3.7 4.1 3.5 4.0 R 0.64 21:11 SPIcam 46(75) -34 75 4.1 3.7 4.1 3.5 4.0 r' 0.72 21:17 NA2gdr 46(29889) -39 74 4.1 3.7 4.1 3.6 4.0 R 0.80 22:01 FASTCAM -29(1060) -95 73 4.1 3.9 4.2 3.8 4.0 -- -- 23:31 SPIcam 56(59) 100 71 3.2 3.2 3.6 2.8 3.1 r' 0.64 23:36 NA2gdr 56(31225) 100 73 3.4 3.2 3.6 2.8 3.1 R 0.87 23:41 NA2gdr -144(24322) 100 74 3.5 3.1 3.5 2.7 3.0 R 0.79 23:43 NA2gdr -94(26092) 100 74 3.4 3.1 3.5 2.8 3.1 R 0.85 23:44 NA2gdr -44(27801) 100 74 3.4 3.1 3.5 2.8 3.1 R 0.78 23:46 NA2gdr 6(29707) 100 75 3.3 3.1 3.5 2.8 3.2 R 0.75 23:47 NA2gdr 56(31262) 100 75 3.3 3.1 3.5 2.8 3.2 R 0.81 23:48 NA2gdr 106(33005) 100 75 3.3 3.1 3.5 2.8 3.2 R 0.76 23:49 NA2gdr 156(34757) 100 75 3.3 3.1 3.5 2.8 3.1 R 0.89 23:51 NA2gdr 206(36306) 100 75 3.2 3.1 3.5 2.8 3.1 R 0.77 23:53 NA2gdr 256(38042) 100 76 3.1 3.0 3.5 2.7 2.9 R 0.67 23:56 NA2gdr 56(31319) 100 77 3.2 3.0 3.4 2.7 3.0 R 0.75 00:00 SPIcam 55(49) 100 77 3.0 3.0 3.4 2.7 2.9 r' 0.61 00:05 NA2gdr 56(31409) 100 79 3.2 3.0 3.4 2.7 3.0 R 0.66 00:27 NICFPS 40(406) -47 47 3.1 3.0 3.4 2.7 3.2 J 0.68 00:28 NA2gdr 40(42667) -47 47 2.9 3.0 3.3 2.7 3.1 R 0.79 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 45 10 13 261 (W) 2186 cirrus none 17:00 41 9 9 254 (WSW) 1976 cirrus none 18:00 38 13 11 265 (W) 1838 cirrus none 19:00 37 14 15 266 (W) 2057 cirrus none 20:00 38 14 13 265 (W) 1714 mst. clr none 21:00 40 14 15 268 (W) 1234 mst. clr none 22:00 39 15 15 270 (W) 1083 lt. cirrus none 23:00 38 15 14 267 (W) 1169 lt. cirrus none 00:00 38 16 17 269 (W) 1190 lt. cirrus none 01:00 37 17 14 266 (W) 1209 mst. clr none 02:00 37 17 22 272 (W) 1103 mst. clr none 03:00 36 17 18 277 (W) 1094 lt. cirrus none 04:00 35 18 18 287 (WNW) 1036 mst. clr none 05:00 34 17 23 293 (WNW) 920 mst. clr none 06:00 34 17 11 294 (WNW) 976 mst. 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 1.4.5