Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20090302 Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 14:14:34 +0000 (UTC) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Monday, March 2, 2009 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- V.Meadows V.Meadows,S.Schmidt TSpec 17:30 20:00 S.Schmidt S.Schmidt TSpec 20:00 00:00 S.McCandliss S.McCandliss,K.France, DIS 00:15 06:15 B.Fleming INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UW08/R 18:55 20:10 0 0 0 0 0 1.3 0 0 0 UW13/R 20:10 00:10 0 0 0 0.1 0 3.9 0 0 0 JH02/R 00:10 05:35 0 0 0 0 5.3 0.1 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback Az Vel Scale Was 580 Measured 579.1, 577.6; 578.4 n/c Alt Vel Scale Was -606 Measured -606.3, -603.1; -604.7 n/c First program went well. Seeing was moderate. Lots of cirrus and lower altitude scattered clouds which made things a little more difficult on observations. There still is alot of confusion with users and the obs-specs (myself in particular) on the specifics of fowler sampling when applied to timing of a sequence of images that still needs to be cleaned up and clarified in the documentation. We will continue to try to work with the instrument developers of TSpec and Nicfps to fix the manuals to explain Fowler Sampling especially for our users who do time series observations. At UT04:29:01 and again at UT04:41:17 the telescope failed to slew with an axe_SlewIter error message, "slew computation did not converge in 30 iterations". This was a new error message for me and it was not clear to me the cause. Sarah appeared to be slewing normally with the GUI. This was well after Venus observations were over. A Problem report (962) was filed with the specifics of the slew however it looked like the slew command was accepted, the axes all were given drifting commands and then the axe_SlewIter error was tripped in both cases. Recovery was relativly quick, I did an axis init and had her reslew the first instance. The second time I had her just try a reslew (which failed) then I did an axis init and had her reslew. Both slews after reinitialization worked fine. Did not see it reoccur. No other problems tonight. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UW13 T T/U 21:29 21:32 Slew failed UW13 T T/U 21:41 21:43 Slew failed ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:17 TSPEC -75( 558) -53 74 12.0 15.0 13.8 13.9 12.7 Ks 1.23 21:09 TSPEC -75( 399) 6 32 10.8 10.8 10.9 9.5 10.3 Ks 1.31 00:14 dis-slit -57( 12) 186 80 10.2 9.6 10.1 8.8 9.8 --- 1.20 02:07 dis-slit -24( 54) 177 71 10.3 9.8 10.2 9.3 10.0 --- 1.37 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 56 11 6 264 (W) 7 ptly cldy none 17:00 56 11 7 285 (WNW) 12 ptly cldy none 18:00 55 9 9 271 (W) 16 ptly cldy none 19:00 53 8 7 261 (W) 0 ptly cldy none 20:00 52 6 5 269 (W) 22 ptly cldy none 21:00 51 5 7 267 (W) 82 ptly cldy none 22:00 51 7 8 279 (W) 316 mstly clr none 23:00 50 6 9 289 (WNW) 355 ptly cldy none 00:00 51 7 13 307 (NW) 342 mstly clr none 01:00 51 6 17 316 (NW) 304 mstly clr none 02:00 50 6 14 318 (NW) 305 mstly clr none 03:00 50 6 15 329 (NNW) 165 mstly clr none 04:00 50 6 4 356 (N) 131 mstly clr none 05:00 50 5 12 306 (NW) 120 mstly clr none 06:00 49 2 11 321 (NW) 111 mstly clr 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: 2.10.0 Current TUI version: TUI 1.5.1