Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2008 12:21:18 -0000 (UTC) Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20080919 From: "Gabrelle Saurage" Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Friday, September 19, 2008 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- A.Becker A.Becker AGILE --:-- --:-- J.Holtzman J.Holtzman,+5 students DIS 02:00 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- UW02/R 19:57 01:05 1.7 3.4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 NM02/O 01:05 05:57 0 1.0 0 0 0 3.9 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialists: G.Saurage Az Velo Scales: 578.7, 582.6; 580.7 (changed to 581) Alt Velo Scales: -622.3, -620.9; -621.6 (changed to -622) A half: Heavily overcast with converging radar activity at sunset; Raining at 20:00. Power fluctuations around 20:40 caused telescope-dome collision; Raining again at 23:00. B half: Skies and radar cleared enough to risk opening at 2am. DIS focus script worked fine, then sometime later after looking at some spectra the focus seemed way off (see dcam 300+, science images ~029). Slitviewer images did not seem so terrible. Seeing was variable but the FWHM on the guider was mostly below 2" while the DIS spectrograph images looked like doughnuts. Looking closely at the slitviewer (zooming in pretty far) it looked like coma at first, then astigmatism (aligned in the alt direction) but moving up in focus didn't help. In fact, moving large amounts in secondary focus (+100 mic) did not seem to have any discernible change in shape or sharpness of stars for slitviewer images and collimation was confirmed to be enabled. This elongation was accentuated at low elevation ~23. It seemed like something else may be wrong, but at the end of the night (at higher alt) I did a final focus run and the images were nice and round (?) The NMSU group were still able to collect data and do some training till twilight. ------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 02:11 dis-slit -273( -80) 84 43 10.9 11.6 11.0 10.6 10.4 1.32 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 63 47 6 267 (W) 524 cloudy none 17:00 64 48 11 240 (WSW) 454 cloudy none 18:00 57 45 8 225 (SW) 532 cloudy none 19:00 53 45 3 252 (WSW) 595 cloudy none 20:00 54 45 7 262 (W) 760 cloudy rain 21:00 48 43 9 175 (S) 713 cloudy none 22:00 53 35 9 49 (NE) 276 cloudy none 23:00 54 35 8 287 (WNW) 452 cloudy rain 00:00 53 36 7 322 (NW) 410 ptly cldy none 01:00 51 39 3 356 (N) 430 ptly cldy none 02:00 50 38 2 350 (N) 439 mstly clr none 03:00 52 41 6 347 (NNW) 680 mstly clr none 04:00 52 40 5 353 (N) 714 clear none 05:00 52 40 2 242 (WSW) 618 clear none 06:00 51 40 1 215 (SW) 684 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 1.5