From: Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20080905 Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2008 14:39:39 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Friday, September 5, 2008 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------ A.Ginsburg A.Ginsburg Tspec 19:35 01:05 J.Wilson J.Wilson,O.Fox, Triplespec 01:05 06:40 S.Brunner,M.Skrutskie, M.Nelson INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- CU03/R 20:16 01:05 0 0 0 0 2.5 2.3 0 0 0 EN03/R 01:05 05:48 0 0 0 0 4.7 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan The guider hangups were much more frequent first half; we had multiple cases where it failed after a single guide loop, and it almost never ran for more than five minutes without needing a restart. Guiding is borderline unusable in this state. The only saving grace is that it doesn't hang during setup/centering. Because of the frequent restarts there were also some more cases of command collisions where the remote observer was doing something else while I was trying to restart. I tried to communicate more, but with hangups once a minute or so, it got pretty tiresome. After midnight the guider settled down a little, and sometimes ran for half an hour without hanging up. By coincidence we discovered another fix. The guider recovers from a hangup when an offset is made -- this can include a 0,0 relative offset! So no more restarting nubs. This is also a remedy that the remote observers can apply if they notice the guider is hung while the obs-spec is getting dinner or something. Tspec itself worked well except for a case where an observer mistakenly pressed Pause, which is not meaningful in an instrument without a shutter. The exposure continued, but there was a later lockup resolved by restarting the instrument nubs. I let the observers push late into the morning to get some twilight flats on tcam with the dome facing west. It is hoped that these will improve the flatfielding of the slitviewer images. During morning twilight DIS red had a warming event, but by the time I saw the critical alerts emails it had already re-cooled. The ion pump current was moderate, so perhaps this was a cryotiger hiccup? ------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:45 TSPEC 200( 969) 76 57 13.6 17.6 15.2 16.1 14.8 K 1.40 20:33 TSPEC 50( 739) 111 68 14.9 16.0 14.8 14.4 14.3 K 0.80 02:06 TSPEC -25( 512) 265 37 12.3 12.2 12.6 11.5 12.0 K 1.30 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 67 50 8 221 (SW) 967 ptly cldy none 17:00 67 48 10 268 (W) 900 ptly cldy none 18:00 61 43 2 264 (W) 891 ptly cldy none 19:00 61 42 6 267 (W) 935 mstly clr none 20:00 58 40 6 271 (W) 1018 clear none 21:00 58 37 2 258 (WSW) 891 clear none 22:00 59 34 2 214 (SW) 784 clear none 23:00 56 37 11 139 (SE) 803 clear none 00:00 57 39 11 162 (SSE) 1025 clear none 01:00 54 38 19 132 (SE) 1059 clear none 02:00 54 37 18 137 (SE) 944 clear none 03:00 54 38 16 158 (SSE) 939 clear none 04:00 54 39 5 179 (S) 965 clear none 05:00 55 39 11 187 (S) 966 clear none 06:00 54 41 11 186 (S) 1030 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