From: Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20091231 Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 13:21:06 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, December 31, 2009 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Klaene R.McMillan Tspec,DIS, 17:00 06:00 NA2gdr,Echelle INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- EN01/W 17:16 06:57 0 0 0 0 0 13.7 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan A productive night of engineering. Skies were clear all night (sometimes very faint haze), with widely varying seeing and focus. High humidity at the beginning of the night had me working without fans, which further perturbed the focus numbers, and then a warm front came through after midnight and changed it all again. I got a Triplespec instrument block which showed a small change from the old one; I did all the measurements in the region near the slit, where distortions are smallest. Some back-and-forth nods confirmed that the star now offsets accurately along the slit. This should improve the accuracy of nods with Boresight or Manual guide modes, but Field Star guide mode will still be vulnerable to problems of differential distortion which will be worse for guide stars further from the slit, or for larger offsets such as object/sky as opposed to the usual A/B. I got a good measurement of the DIS slitviewer focus offset, which agreed with the assessment made on Sunday night; when I failed to find the problem in-dome last night, I was looking at the wrong thing. I adjusted the slitviewer position and got improved agreement between slitviewer and spectrograph focus, which should help avoid double-peaked spectra. I obtained a pointing model including extra points at high altitude, and the results confused me. So I obtained another, then one with the echelle, and then a fourth. Much cogitation ensued and will probably continue for a while. Pointing should be about as accurate as ever up to 80 degrees, but our model may be insufficient to guarantee accurate pointing (and therefore tracking) at the highest altitudes. Because of this uncertainty, I didn't do any fastcam high-altitude tracking measurements, which require a reasonably good pointing model. For observing, we will proceed with the old limits; in special circumstances observations may be made up to 87 degrees, but observers should be aware that above 80 degrees tracking will be poor, windshake will be magnified, and data quality may go down despite the lower airmass. ------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 22:55 dis-slit 204( -521) 192 69 -5.9 -6.7 -6.0 -7.3 -6.4 1.70 23:36 dis-red 325( -359) 207 66 -5.0 -5.8 -5.1 -5.9 -5.3 0.00 23:42 dis-blue 275( -405) 209 66 -4.7 -5.7 -5.1 -5.9 -5.3 0.00 23:45 dis-slit 206( -468) 209 66 -4.7 -5.6 -4.9 -5.7 -5.0 1.30 (adjusted slitviewer) 00:15 dis-slit 302( -341) 216 62 -4.6 -5.1 -4.6 -5.1 -4.6 1.60 01:15 ECHELLE -28(-1312) 86 34 -2.6 -4.6 -4.3 -5.2 -4.1 2.50 03:05 ECHELLE -68(-1258) 236 35 -1.1 -2.6 -2.0 -2.8 -2.1 1.20 (adjusted tert piston) 04:23 dis-slit 89( -379) -31 50 -1.3 -1.8 -1.3 -2.3 -1.4 1.70 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:00 23 15 2 262 (W) 0 clear none 17:00 21 14 5 299 (WNW) 0 clear humid 18:00 20 15 8 355 (N) 0 clear humid 19:00 20 11 5 259 (W) 0 clear none 20:00 21 9 1 221 (SW) 0 clear none 21:00 20 9 6 272 (W) 0 clear none 22:00 21 6 4 313 (NW) 0 clear none 23:00 23 -10 8 353 (N) 0 clear none 00:00 24 -9 11 354 (N) 0 clear none 01:00 26 -8 12 342 (NNW) 0 clear none 02:00 27 -14 16 324 (NW) 0 clear none 03:00 29 -16 12 314 (NW) 0 clear none 04:00 32 -15 5 347 (NNW) 0 clear none 05:00 33 -14 13 346 (NNW) 0 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: 2.11.1 Current TUI version: 1.6.2