Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20080612 Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:21:07 -0600 (MDT) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu (Bill Ketzeback) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, June 12th, 2008 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- T.Murphy R.McMillan APOLLO 20:15 21:25 M.Gladders M.Gladders NICFPS 21:50 00:50 W.Zheng W.Zheng DIS 01:05 06:30 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- DD01/R 21:16 21:31 0 0 0 0 0 0.3 1.0 0 0 UC01/R 21:31 01:05 0 0 0 0.1 0 3.4 0 0 0 JH03/R 01:05 04:51 0 0 0 0 2.5 1.3 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback Az Velocity Scales: 581.2, 578.2; 579.7 was 581.0, no change made. Nice photometric night with decent seeing. Apollo had a good run. The video capture that had given them so much trouble the last few runs seemed to be resolved by the start of their observations tonight. Thank you Fritz! I ran into some difficulties focusing Nicfps after the APOLLO run. It appeared that there was an inadvertant reset of the Leech controller and then a handful of operator errors on my part got us off to a slow start. At the same time the scheduled observer was a no show and I contacted the PI who was able to quickly login and observe by the time I was done with focus with no extra time lost. I am guessing a loss of about 6 - 8 minutes due to the bad image(s) seen during focus. Second half observer had a little trouble at the start of the night identifying their target but once we got on the object it was smooth sailing for the remainder of the night. The recent problems with the dis-slitviewer displaying vertical streaking for bright stars and a gradient across the image appears to have been caused by the camera being unable to maintain temperature. Removing the winter cover and cleaning of the cooling fins looks to have worked to fix the problem. No evidence of the streaking was seen tonight on the sky. No problems the remainder of the night. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UC01 N I/SH 21:40 21:46 Inadvertant reset of Leech Controller? Bad images seen. ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM ----------------------------------------------------------------- 20:21 APOLLO -100(1394) 14 45 18.1 19.8 19.8 18.4 18.2 -- 1.30 22:00 NICFPS -44(1019) -31 80 17.3 17.6 18.2 17.1 17.3 Ks 1.01 01:11 dis-slit 24( 421) -174 62 16.3 16.1 16.6 15.6 16.0 -- 1.21 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 71 20 21 265 (W) 1682 clear none 17:00 73 21 21 264 (W) 2133 clear dust 18:00 72 22 12 248 (WSW) 2338 clear dust 19:00 69 17 17 240 (WSW) 1984 clear none 20:00 66 14 11 265 (W) 1823 clear none 21:00 64 12 15 218 (SW) 1920 clear none 22:00 63 11 13 235 (SW) 1815 clear none 23:00 62 11 14 241 (WSW) 1610 clear none 00:00 62 13 8 253 (WSW) 1824 clear none 01:00 62 15 9 263 (W) 1899 clear none 02:00 61 15 8 275 (W) 2081 clear dust 03:00 62 10 2 359 (N) 1999 clear none 04:00 62 10 9 38 (NE) 2163 clear dust 05:00 62 10 10 45 (NE) 2343 clear dust 06:00 55 13 15 72 (ENE) 2551 clear dust 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