Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20091030 Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:15:50 +0000 (UTC) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Friday, October 30, 2009 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- A.Verbiscer A.Verbiscer, Tspec 19:00 00:00 M.Skrutskie B.Ketzeback B.Ketzeback Tspec, Echelle 00:00 01:05 J.Holtzman J.Holtman + 8 students Tspec 01:10 07:12 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- UV03/R 18:22 00:00 0 0 0 0 0 5.6 0 0 NM10/W 00:00 01:00 0 0 0 0 0 1.0 0 0 NM04/O 01:00 07:12 0 0 0 0 2.0 4.2 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: B. Ketzeback Quite windy with lots of blowing snow first half however I opened since the telescope and optics were well below freezing temperatures all day. We had intermittant clouds until midnight. Seeing was quite poor first half since the wind was from the north. Conditions improved a great deal after midnight. At UT04:12:20, the telescope would not slew because of the error, "Slew computation did not converge in 30 iterations". This was due to the tcc being unable to compute the proper wrap for the rotator. I had my observers wait 30 seconds and try to slew again. This time the slew happened correctly. At UT06:27:37, saw an example of PR/923 "crash of guide loops during offsets". The guider attempted to send a guide offset at the same time that the tspec dither script was attempting to offset the telescope. This crashed the guide loop. The error message, "move rejected telescope is slewing" and "guide offset failed" accompanied the crash. Recovery was quick and no time was lost. At approximately UT06:57 the echelle slitviewer was happily guiding when the target slewed across the field about 30 arcseconds to the edge of the field. Image e0075 shows before, e0076 shows star slewing, e0077 shows star stopped at the edge of the field. Less than 6 minutes was lost recovering. No downtime was recorded. Cause is not known. I did not catch anything obvious on the stripchart display. No problems second half. ------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:03 TSPEC 413( 233) 50 39 -2.4 -2.3 -3.0 -2.6 -2.4 Ks 1.52 00:43 ECHELLE -120(-1074) 121 57 4.0 2.8 3.5 3.3 3.4 nd3 1.80 01:16 TSPEC 130( 185) 224 60 3.8 3.1 3.8 3.1 3.5 Ks 1.31 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 27 11 2 28 (NNE) 361 mstly clr none 17:00 27 8 22 31 (NNE) 401 ptly cldy none 18:00 28 8 23 19 (NNE) 434 ptly cldy none 19:00 28 8 24 21 (NNE) 444 ptly cldy none 20:00 30 10 21 14 (NNE) 588 mstly cldy none 21:00 31 12 25 12 (NNE) 298 ptly cldy none 22:00 33 14 11 3 (N) 239 mstly clr none 23:00 35 15 18 66 (ENE) 229 mstly clr none 00:00 39 17 8 43 (NE) 118 clear none 01:00 38 15 11 77 (ENE) 131 ptly cldy none 02:00 39 18 2 83 (E) 54 mstly clr none 03:00 42 17 1 248 (WSW) 16 clear none 04:00 40 18 3 262 (W) 39 clear none 05:00 40 17 5 260 (W) 65 clear none 06:00 43 18 3 326 (NW) 43 clear none TELESCOPE STATUS Telescope drives operational. Current TCC version: 2.10.0 Current TUI version: TUI 1.6.2