Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:25:30 -0600 (MDT) Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20080716 From: "Jack Dembicky" Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, July 16, 2008 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Klaene J.Dembicky SPIcam 04:00 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/O 21:13 05:06 0 6.8 0 0 0 1.1 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J. Dembicky Az Velocity Scale 576.8, Was 580.0, changed 577.0 Alt Velocity scale -628.5, Was -631.0, changed -629.0 An even more frustrating night than last night. It started looking promising at sunset when I started to see the clouds thinning but by the end of twilight the clouds thickened back up and prevented me from opening. We had a few sprinkles around 00:30 but not much. Lots of lightning off in the basin and to out N and S/SE all night long. By 02:30 the humidity was now over 80% and slowly climbing. At 04:00 we had a clearing, but high humidity (92%). I opted to carefully open, even though we were over the closure limits to at least check pointing. I also took a focus sweep and star images looked good (0.94 arc seeing, not bad for a warm telescope and poor conditions outside). I took an out of focus star image (+1051um out of focus). Not a true S-H collimation test but it should show anything grossly out of alignment. Looked good. I put the SDSS u' filter in SPIcam, with 1s exposures, and went around to various bright star (in the bright star catalog) taking images and checking how well they fell on the chip. (BTW, pointing looked pretty good on my initial stars, almost dead center). Actually the first 3 stars I took in SDSS r' (I forgot to hit the apply button in TUI). Vega, and afterwards, are in SDSS u'. Stars fell well centered on the chip (for over exposed stars). Images are in /export/images/Q3APO/UT080717 I noted that the altitude motor current seemed to be a bit noisy. Day staff should be able to investigate tommorow. I noticed this during checkout as well, even after the velocity scale corrections. Our internet connection to the outside world went down around 02:00, so I couldn't get to my outside email, with the instructions on what values to put in for the pointing model, so I had to do it from memory. I didn't get it started until 04:40, but I figured I could run into twilight (or just kill it when it gets too light outside). NA2 guider selected with Rot 0 mount DoPtErr_DoPause=False DoPrErr_DoRetry=True DoPtErr_MaxAltForCorr=10 DoPtErr_NExtraCorr=0 DoPtErr_SlewPause=2 DoPtErr_OffPause=2 AZ/Alt Grid: Grid_8_10_25_82_F_45.DAT I got 74 out of 80 points (missing points due to clouds/sky) I did not implement the model (yet). I think it looks good but will send a copy to Russet to examine and confirm to implement. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 04:12 SPIcam -49(504) 23 71 12.9 14.4 15.3 13.8 13.3 r' 0.94 04:37 NA2gdr -1952(30000) 87 52 12.9 14.1 15.0 13.2 13.1 clear 1.03 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 62 50 6 22 (NNE) 719 cldy none 17:00 62 50 6 357 (N) 795 cldy none 18:00 63 49 7 22 (NNE) 804 cldy none 19:00 62 50 5 357 (N) 796 cldy none 20:00 63 47 9 10 (N) 995 cldy none 21:00 63 46 12 360 (N) 867 cldy none 22:00 63 47 8 13 (NNE) 758 cldy none 23:00 61 49 5 352 (N) 685 cldy none 00:00 61 50 5 278 (W) 698 cldy Lt. rain 01:00 59 51 6 269 (W) 695 cldy none 02:00 58 51 7 233 (SW) 751 cldy none 03:00 57 52 6 162 (SSE) 2238 cldy none 04:00 55 52 2 143 (SE) 1910 pt. cldy humid 05:00 56 50 1 119 (ESE) 1351 pt. cldy none 06:00 56 51 7 316 (NW) 945 pt. 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 1.4.5