From: Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20080727 Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:36:49 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Sunday, July 27, 2008 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- J.Stockton J.Stockton DIS --:-- --:-- G.Wolf-Chase M.Smutko,G.Wolf-Chase NIC-FPS 03:20 04:30 T.Murphy R.McMillan,T.Murphy, APOLLO 04:40 05:25 E.Swanson M.Klaene R.McMillan Fastcam 05:35 05:50 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- NM05/R 21:05 01:05 4.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 UC03/R 01:05 04:45 0.7 1.6 0 0 0 1.4 0 0 0 DD01/O 04:45 05:30 0 0 0 0 0 0.5 0.3 0 0 EN01/O/D 05:30 06:05 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.4 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan First half we still had >100% humidity, although the rain had stopped after 8 inches (forecast called for 0.5 inches -- oops). I spent some time investigating water damage in the dome -- apparently we did get some condensation on the secondary, in addition to the many dome leaks. I set up some heaters to try to warm the dome up a bit. Around midnight the humidity suddenly dropped to below 80%. It was still quite cloudy, though, so I hesitated to tell observers there was any hope. I thought about doing the remaining fastcam engineering, but I had trouble establishing communications with the camera. When I made the instrument change at 1 am, I decided to take a chance and open. Then I got downstairs, saw new blips on the radar, and went straight back up to close. Belatedly, I got communications working to Fastcam. It took me a while to convince myself the radar signals were just noise, but eventually we got open. NICFPS got focused and was able to take some surprisingly effective data through clouds -- until they got thicker. The observers quit a few minutes early due to clouds. During the instrument change to APOLLO, I had some repeated servo errors when trying to move the rotator back to 0 mount. Finally I gave up and left it in place, then tried again when parking the telescope -- it worked fine then. APOLLO got on the sky with a nice hole around the moon, but the laser had a problem due to some misaligned optics. Tom Murphy was onsite and discovered and fixed the problem just as the clouds were closing in. But they held off long enough for us to get excellent returns from Apollo 15, and closed in when we tried for a second reflector. Eyeballing the clouds, I thought they were too thick for Fastcam as well as for APOLLO, but there was a thinner patch near Deneb, so I went there and to my surprise, was able to get critical data for an instrument block before the clouds thickened up again. ------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 03:32 NICFPS -175( 739) 44 52 13.7 14.3 14.5 13.6 13.5 Ks 0.70 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 56 57 2 285 (WNW) cloudy lt rain 17:00 58 56 7 313 (NW) cloudy lt rain 18:00 58 57 6 275 (W) cloudy lt rain 19:00 54 55 7 270 (W) mstly cldy humid 20:00 55 56 5 267 (W) mstly cldy humid 21:00 55 56 7 246 (WSW) mstly cldy humid 22:00 54 55 11 311 (NW) mstly cldy humid 23:00 53 52 5 349 (N) mstly cldy humid 00:00 57 50 9 359 (N) mstly clr none 01:00 57 51 8 1 (N) ptly cldy none 02:00 57 50 8 23 (NNE) ptly cldy none 03:00 57 52 10 18 (NNE) ptly cldy none 04:00 58 52 13 41 (NE) ptly cldy none 05:00 58 51 21 20 (NNE) ptly cldy none 06:00 57 51 19 5 (N) ptly 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 1.5