From:
Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20090531
Date: Mon,  1 Jun 2009 11:55:27 +0000 (UTC)
                        Apache Point Observatory
                        3.5m Telescope Night Log
                          Sunday, May 31, 2009
                                                          ACTUAL
 ASTRONOMER     OBSERVER(S)            INSTRUMENT      START  FINISH
 -------------------------------------------------------------------
 T.Murphy       R.McMillan             APOLLO          --:--  --:--
 F.Mullally     F.Mullally             Agile           21:10  01:05
 E.Hilton       E.Hilton               Agile           01:40  06:00
   INST     SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH     EQUIP      OBS     DAY  NOT USED
 I/ROW/DN   START  FINISH   D    B    D    B    D    B   USE   D    B
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 DD01/O     20:15  21:15    0    0    0   0.1   0    0    0    0    0
 PU02/R     21:15  01:05    0    0    0    0    0   3.9   0    0    0
 UW06/R     01:05  04:54    0    0    0   0.5  2.9  0.4   0    0    0
  note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time
                ------------- ACTIVITY LOG --------------
 Observing Specialist: R.McMillan
 Velocity scales unchanged for az and alt.
 A storm passing at sunset delayed opening.  APOLLO might have been
 able to get a few minutes on the sky, but the guide camera was
 non-functional.  I opened once the storm had passed and went
 straight to Agile.
 The rotator, which had seemed to be working during test slews,
 failed the first slew.  It reported "motor control buffer empty"
 indicating that it needed to be reset, but the program enabling the
 connection for the reset had been stopped.  I called Fritz and he
 got it working again within minutes.  While the rotator was stuck we
 were progressing with focus anyway, so I didn't count any time lost.
 Agile functioned normally during first half, and the only difficulty
 was following the swiftly-changing focus.  But the instrument got
 hung up when the observer used Abort to stop his sequence for the
 handover.  I ran through the reset sequence and was able to take
 biases, but exposures of nonzero length failed with "image arrived
 too early."  After some struggling and repeated reset attempts, I
 found the documentation describing how to restart the timing pulse;
 this was successful, and while the instrument re-cooled we proceeded
 with focus and field verification.
 The same problem (needing reset, timing restart, another reset)
 occurred in the morning when the second half observer stopped his
 sequence with Abort.  This was frustrating since the observer then
 wanted to take cals, but had to wait for the temperature to
 stabilize first.
 The gmech was also lost and incommunicado, making guiding impossible
 since the guider focus for Agile is very different from other
 instruments.  I found the instructions for restarting the gmech in
 my email, then remapped the mechanism and got the guider working.
                       ------- FAILURE LOG -------
  PROG   INST   FAILURE MODE     TIME
       (SEDFNVOG)   TI/SHU    START  FINISH  DESCRIPTION
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 DD01     A          I/H      21:08  21:15   APOLLO STV guider failed
 UW06     P          I/S      01:10  01:40   Agile hung/timing wedged
               ---------------- FOCUS LOG ---------------
 Time  Instrument  Focus     Az  El  Temp Strc Prim  Sec  Air  filt  FWHM
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 21:17 AGILE    50(  144)  89  33  12.8 15.3 13.7 14.1 13.2   B  1.70
 02:11 AGILE  -150( -276)  42  55  11.7 11.5 11.4 10.4 10.9   B  1.50
                ------------- WEATHER LOG ----------------
                                   Wind                      Precip.or
     Time   Temp F Dewp F  MPH  Direction    Dust    Sky    Conditions
    ------------------------------------------------------------------
     16:00    63    29     16   244  (WSW)    981  ptly cldy   none
     17:00    60    35     12   266    (W)    929  ptly cldy   none
     18:00    62    33      9   287  (WNW)    915  ptly cldy   none
     19:00    59    34     13   268    (W)   1059 mstly cldy lt rain
     20:00    57    31      3   254  (WSW)    952  ptly cldy   none
     21:00    56    31      7   264    (W)    874  ptly cldy   none
     22:00    55    30      9   262    (W)    915  ptly cldy   none
     23:00    55    24      9   257  (WSW)   1002  ptly cldy   none
     00:00    54    27     10   289  (WNW)   1019    clear     none
     01:00    53    27      9   274    (W)   1007    clear     none
     02:00    53    25      5   336  (NNW)    994    clear     none
     03:00    53    21      7   348  (NNW)    949    clear     none
     04:00    53    17     10   356    (N)    952    clear     none
     05:00    48    29     15    54   (NE)    936    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: 2.10.0
      Current TUI version: TUI 1.5.1