From: Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20080922 Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:45:51 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Sunday, September 21, 2008 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- J.Holtzman J.Holtzman,+5students SPIcam 21:45 00:50 M.Shin M.Shin,M.Oguri DIS 01:05 02:50 03:35 05:15 T.Murphy R.McMillan APOLLO 05:35 06:10 INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- NM02/O 19:54 01:05 1.8 0 0 0 1.9 1.5 0 0 0 PU04/R 01:05 05:28 0 0 0 0 0 4.4 0 0 0 DD01/O 05:28 06:43 0 0 0 0 0 0.5 0.2 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialists: R.McMillan During the afternoon, Jon Holtzman and I reviewed some images from the past few nights and concluded the DIS spectrographs are somewhat out of focus. We will work on this in the morning and should be able to effect some improvement. Rain around sunset and lingering clouds kept us closed for a while, but we were able to open to mostly clear skies. Seeing started out very good but degraded to moderate with a shift of the wind. During second half, a humidity spike forced us to close for a while, but we were able to open again when the dewpoint dropped. I used the opportunity of focusing DIS second half to assess how much disagreement there is between the slitviewer and spectrograph(s). The blue spectrum best focus was 75 steps above the slitviewer focus, and the red best focus was 100 steps above the slitviewer. If our work in the morning is successful, this should drop to a much smaller offset, ideally zero. After further struggle, I was able to return the Shack-Hartmann software to a state where it can reduce data, so I reduced the set taken during the engineering earlier in the week. It recommended a significant change in collimation. Due to concerns that this could affect pointing, I waited for the instrument change from DIS to APOLLO. The observers were gracious enough to end a few minutes early so I could slip in some engineering. With a not-too-bad-looking unfocused donut on the NA2 guider, I implemented the change in collimation. The change was small but appeared to make things worse, so I reversed it. APOLLO had good success this morning, breaking more records until shut down prematurely by order from WSMR. ------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 01:14 dis-slit -37( 66) -14 46 9.9 9.8 10.1 9.2 9.7 - 1.28 01:30 dis (red) 38( 138) -19 45 9.9 9.8 10.1 9.1 9.7 - 1.44 01:30 dis (blue) 63( 163) -19 45 9.9 9.8 10.1 9.1 9.7 - 1.48 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 60 46 8 195 (SSW) 650 cloudy rain 17:00 57 49 5 260 (W) 901 cloudy rain 18:00 56 48 7 140 (SE) 1113 cloudy lt rain 19:00 54 46 8 158 (SSE) 737 cloudy lt rain 20:00 54 42 10 181 (S) 974 mstly cldy none 21:00 53 45 14 154 (SSE) 228 ptly cldy none 22:00 53 44 15 171 (S) 588 mstly clr none 23:00 52 43 16 153 (SSE) 348 clear none 00:00 50 45 17 137 (SE) 949 clear none 01:00 50 43 21 137 (SE) 151 clear none 02:00 49 43 17 133 (SE) 586 clear none 03:00 49 45 16 136 (SE) 703 clear humid 04:00 50 42 12 180 (S) 1091 clear none 05:00 50 41 12 182 (S) 1107 clear none 06:00 49 43 13 173 (S) 1322 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