Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20091006 Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 12:09:48 +0000 (UTC) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Tuesday, October 6, 2009 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- D.York D.York Echelle 23:50 01:05 S.Schmidt S.Schmidt Tspec 01:05 02:52 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- UC06/R 18:49 01:00 1.1 3.9 0 0 0 1.2 0 0 UW04/R 01:00 06:53 0 4.4 0 1.5 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: B. Ketzeback I power cycled the 3.5m dewpoint sensor at 22:00 MST per Ed Leon's request before he left for the day. This was to ensure that the warming calibration cycle for the sensor happens during the day and not during the observing schedule. Unable to open much of first half due to overcast skies and nearby precip as seen on weather radar. I used the oppurtunity to exercise the axis control software and axis motors with in dome pointing models. I started the first model at UT 04:30. At UT 04:42, I saw a Servo Error on the Azimuth axis at -66.5 degrees azimuth during a slew (or possibly at the end of a slew). An axis stop, e-stop and init cleared the error. I restarted the pointing model at UT 05:02. At UT 05:15, I saw a warning that "last fiducial error too large" on azimuth but it cleared as soon as another fiducial was crossed. Ended model at UT 05:40 when skies cleared. Between UT 06:13 and 06:55 the observer was using the echelle trailing script. Guiding was having a terrible time maintaining the star on the boresight. The star was drifting and bouncing in azimuth on the sky (mostly vertically along the slit in the trailing direction) approximately +/- 5 to 8 arcseconds from the boresight. See ecam exposures proc-e0036 - proc-e0200. The user had the trailing script set for 3 x 600s exposures, #trails=5, size of trail = 3.8", which results in a reported trailing rate of 0.0"/sec (is this a reporting error in the window not having enough significant digits? The trailing certainly seemed to be faster than 0.1 "/sec during the run of the script) Guiding on the slitviewer was 3 - 5 second exposures. At UT 07:29, the second half user was using the Tspec dither script when I saw the error message in the status window flash, "Not Responding" followed almost immediately by a ControllerError message for azimuth. I found the controller unresponsive and did a reset (but not power cycle). After the controller came back it was unresponsive in TUI. I did get the azimuth axis to move through talk2boxes (tcc_az) after a large move TUI was again able to move the axis however at the end of a slew (UT 07:45) the error message DeadProc="T_TRACK" was seen. It had been years since I had seen such an error. I recalled the general location in the TCC documentation on how to recover from this but was unsuccessful in finding what I needed. I guessed that doing a telstop/telrun might wake up or restart the process but it did not. I called Fritz. Fritz believed he found the proper command "tcc restart track". We reslewed to the field and at first indication it looked like we might be tracking but clouds were rather thick. Fritz went back to bed and after a short while we were able to determine that the telescope indeed was not tracking (all stars were trailed when we had a short break in the cloud cover). Running a MONITOR PROCESS on tcc35m showed that T_TRACK appeared to alive. At this time I noticed that the 2.5m Observers were closing for weather (The IRSC died earlier in the night). I visually checked skies and confirmed that it was threatening enough to close. Since, I also had no indication that it might improve the rest of the night. I decided not to call Fritz again. He and Russell can work through the problem tomorrow during the day. Problem report 1058 generated. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UW04 T T/S 01:29 02:59 Telescope wil not track the sky ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23:53 ECHELLE -170( -763) -94 29 9.0 9.3 9.2 9.0 9.0 ND2 1.62 01:08 TSPEC 150( 511) -97 73 9.6 9.4 9.7 9.2 9.5 K 1.18 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 50 43 15 219 (SW) 917 ptly cldy none 17:00 50 44 5 200 (SSW) 1024 mstly cldy none 18:00 50 44 9 187 (S) 1125 cloudy none 19:00 50 45 10 176 (S) 991 cloudy none 20:00 48 40 16 126 (SE) 1601 cloudy none 21:00 50 40 18 158 (SSE) 1516 cloudy none 22:00 50 39 16 154 (SSE) 1775 cloudy none 23:00 50 40 14 156 (SSE) 1674 ptly cldy none 00:00 48 39 17 163 (SSE) 1637 ptly cldy none 01:00 50 41 18 179 (S) 1298 ptly cldy none 02:00 52 43 17 183 (S) 991 mstly cldy none 03:00 49 42 18 160 (SSE) 1356 cloudy none 04:00 49 42 23 152 (SSE) 1367 cloudy none 05:00 49 45 23 150 (SSE) 1431 ptly cldy humid 06:00 50 46 22 145 (SE) 1733 ptly cldy humid TELESCOPE STATUS Telescope drives operational. Current TCC version: 2.10.0 Current TUI version: TUI 1.6.2