From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20080620 Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2008 05:33:57 -0600 (MDT) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Friday, June 20, 2008 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- G.Wallerstein K.Kinemuchi DIS 22:35 01:00 D.Hoffman D.Hoffman DIS 01:03 05:15 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- UW12/R 21:18 01:05 0.7 0.6 0 0 0 2.5 0 0 0 NM03/R 01:05 04:52 0 0 0 0 0 3.8 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialists: R.McMillan We had rain and hail in the late afternoon, with some more light sprinkles during twilight. After the rain and clouds moved on, I waited a while longer out of concern over gusty winds, but eventually opened to mostly clear skies and poor seeing. Last night I had checked out the newly-pumped echelle and noticed that the vacuum looked good and the chip contamination was gone. But it wasn't until checkout today that I noticed a problem with dropped bits in the echelle images. I tried restarting various things without success, then declared the echelle not usable for science tonight. Fortunately there was already a backup program ready to go. The DIS slitviewer shutter was fine tonight; I think the "streaking" problem was fixed by the shutter replacement. There were also no problems with the slitviewer software hanging up, but I can't attribute that to anything other than luck. The telescope was mostly well behaved, with excellent pointing and tracking on several high-transiting objects. There were some minor complications: one bad magnesensor measurement on altitude (perhaps because I hadn't made sure there was a crossing on the first slew after init) which cost less than one minute to correct, and some back-and-forth changes of the azimuth velocity scale which cost less than three minutes to correct. Previously the velocity scale was 581; at checkout I measured 589 and changed the file to 587; at 2 am I saw that slews were getting noisy, measured 577 and changed the file to 579. The large changes might be related to settling of the new drives or to recent in ambient temperature; we'll keep an eye on future behavior. ------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 22:45 dis-slit -278( 54) -31 46 12.3 14.5 15.2 13.6 12.6 3.00 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 68 47 5 186 (S) 5389 cloudy none 17:00 61 43 13 89 (E) 2173 cloudy rain 18:00 53 40 17 77 (ENE) 2776 cloudy lt rain 19:00 60 35 10 78 (ENE) 1564 cloudy none 20:00 63 35 4 295 (WNW) 2316 cloudy none 21:00 56 43 13 227 (SW) 3050 cloudy lt rain 22:00 57 39 21 76 (ENE) 2142 ptly cldy none 23:00 54 37 21 65 (ENE) 1564 mstly clr none 00:00 56 43 6 89 (E) 1625 clear none 01:00 53 39 17 65 (ENE) 1469 clear none 02:00 54 41 12 70 (ENE) 1785 clear none 03:00 52 42 13 82 (E) 2307 clear none 04:00 55 40 7 43 (NE) 1288 clear none 05:00 55 40 0 90 (E) 1710 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 1.4.5