Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20091031 Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2009 16:31:25 +0000 (UTC) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Saturday, October 31, 2009 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- J.Holtzman J.Holtman + 8 students Echelle 18:30 01:00 Nicfps M.Strauss X.Fan Nicfps 01:00 06:49 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- NM04/O 18:21 01:00 0 0 0 0 0 6.6 0 0 PU08/R 01:00 06:13 0 0 0 0 1.0 5.3 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: B. Ketzeback During afternoon cals the observers discovered a couple problems with Nicfps. A bad channel read and a large gradient in dome flats led me to do two resets of the instrument and to attempt a rehome on all three of the filter wheels in the instrument. We however were trying to get on the sky during twilight so further analysis of nicfps images while the tertiary was pointed at NA1 was not desireable. Later in the evening the gradient was gone from on sky images so the problem was believed to be resolved. This morning I again attempted to get dome flats for their project and noted the gradient had reappeared. Under less stress and pressure to get on sky I learned that if the 0 read of the instrument is near saturation (in non linear region of the chip) this causes the CDS image (frame 0 of the fits file) to show a large gradient from top to bottom in the image. Once I switched to the Dim Quartz lamps and carefully inspected the level of the 0 read frame to be below 45K the graident went away and flats were very nice and flat. In fowler 8 with the dim quartz I discovered the following exposure times resulted in nice flats of the following levels in J,H, Ks: 15s, 7s, 5.5s (min exp time for FS=8) had 14K, 13K and 20K counts respectively. The sky was clear and photometric all night with sub arcsecond seeing in both echelle and nicfps until about 4am when the wind shifted to the NNE. Within an hour the wind shifted again to the NNW and seeing dropped from >2 arcseconds to 1 - 1.5 arcseond range. Telescope and instruments behaved very well tonight for Halloween, Daylight Savings Time change and my last night as a regularly scheduled observing specialist. It was a pleasure to provide observing support to the 3.5m Users these past 7 years. I will now continue to do that but in a different capacity here switching to the day staff. 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 21:07 NICFPS 6( 569) 99 55 6.7 7.2 7.0 5.6 6.8 Ks 0.51 23:54 ECHELLE -156( -880) -125 22 7.3 6.3 6.9 5.8 6.6 ND1 0.91 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 47 22 3 255 (WSW) 399 clear none 17:00 46 20 2 224 (SW) 340 clear none 18:00 47 20 1 18 (NNE) 405 clear none 19:00 45 18 2 245 (WSW) 245 clear none 20:00 42 18 7 352 (N) 178 clear none 21:00 44 16 2 226 (SW) 54 clear none 22:00 44 15 2 214 (SW) 58 clear none 23:00 43 16 4 256 (WSW) 52 clear none 00:00 44 15 1 299 (WNW) 39 clear none 01:00 44 15 7 347 (NNW) 32 clear none 01:00 42 17 3 352 (N) 37 clear none 02:00 42 18 6 13 (NNE) 22 clear none 03:00 46 18 9 24 (NNE) 28 clear none 04:00 44 15 8 3 (N) 19 clear none 05:00 48 12 11 3 (N) 22 clear none 06:00 49 4 9 352 (N) 59 clear none TELESCOPE STATUS Telescope drives operational. Current TCC version: 2.10.0 Current TUI version: TUI 1.6.2