Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:41:34 -0000 (UTC)
Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20090710
From: "Gabrelle Saurage"
                        Apache Point Observatory
                        3.5m Telescope Night Log
                        Friday, July 10th, 2009
                                                          ACTUAL
 ASTRONOMER     OBSERVER(S)         INSTRUMENT        START  FINISH
-------------------------------------------------------------------
 M.Klaene       G.Saurage           SPICAM            20:20  05:30
                                    Na2 Guider
   INST     SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH     EQUIP      OBS     DAY  NOT USED
 I/ROW/DN   START  FINISH   D    B    D    B    D    B   USE   D    B
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 EN01/W     21:16  05:01    0    0    0    0   0.9  6.8   0    0    0
  note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time
                ------------- ACTIVITY LOG --------------
 Observing Specialist: G.Saurage
Clear skies at sunset. Dust levels (and seeing) rose in the middle of the night.
Az controller seems to be "emptying" the buffer on every other slew. It occurs like
this: I send a slew, but the telescope doesn't move. TUI status window reports
"Motor control buffer empty" for Az. This effectively stops the telescope; it is not
slewing or tracking but also not really giving an error. I send the slew again and
it works fine.
This can be observed in the sky flats I took at the beginning of the night which
uses a script to slew the telescope in between images. Every other file has star
streaks. Fritz suggested this may have something to do with the network the
controller is using. It seems very consistently failing every other slew command.
UT time stamps of when this happened tonight after the tracking tests began: UT ~03:20
UT 05:03
UT 05:18
UT 07:02
UT 08:52
UT 10:41, 10:42... many more in the morning while trying TertPoint.
20:40 begin tracking test: skyflats, skyflats.*.fits
      All related files in Q3APO/UT090711/spicam.
21:15 tracking test: east, east.*.fits
23:00 tracking test: west, west.*.fits
23:08 dust >3k, wind gusts ~30mph, seeing ~3"
01:00 tracking test: north, north.*.fits
02:52 tracking test: south, test.south.*.fits
04:30 tried to do TertPoint at NA1, but the motor control issue complicated things.
Switching to another instrument also requires two attempts; the first "switch"
nothing actually moves.
Then ecam seemed to get into a bad state, giving this error even after repeated
startNubs:
10:56:25 APO.gabrelleTTUI 263 KeyDispatcher f Aborted; Actor='ecam'; Cmd='findstars
exptime=5.0 bin=1 window=0,0,510,510 radMult=1.0 thresh=3.0'
Then I got the guider back but since to slew to a bright star takes two attempts I
could not I could not get a measurement and then check it reliably. First attempt:
TertXTiltCoef 980 to 950
TertYTiltCoef 950 to 790
Then I could not seem to get a repeating field with an obvious bright star. So I
think this test will need to be done after the controller is worked on. In fact,
with the motor control buffer issue, I don't think a pointing model will be possible
either.
                       ------- 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
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
 21:23 SPICAM   194( 1055) 100  61  18.4 20.6 19.8 19.1 19.1   V  1.30
 23:16 SPICAM   176(  879) 258  56  16.9 17.2 17.4 16.6 16.7   V  3.14
                ------------- WEATHER LOG ----------------
                                   Wind                      Precip.or
     Time   Temp F Dewp F  MPH  Direction    Dust    Sky    Conditions
    ------------------------------------------------------------------
     16:00    75    34     12   186    (S)   1207 mstly clr    none
     17:00    77    36      2   195  (SSW)   1064 mstly clr    none
     18:00    72    32      1   114  (ESE)   1056 mstly clr    none
     19:00    71    33     12   125   (SE)   1064 mstly clr    none
     20:00    69    34     13   117  (ESE)   1259 mstly clr    none
     21:00    66    34     17   125   (SE)   1251 mstly clr    none
     22:00    64    36     21   126   (SE)   2003 mstly clr    none
     23:00    62    39     28   126   (SE)   2794 mstly clr    dust
     00:00    61    41     20   124   (SE)   3065 mstly clr    dust
     01:00    60    40     24   120  (ESE)   2582 mstly clr    dust
     02:00    59    38     20   124   (SE)   1622 mstly clr    none
     03:00    57    37     13   102  (ESE)   1754 mstly clr    none
     04:00    57    37     13    92    (E)   1928 mstly clr    none
     05:00    57    37     15    85    (E)   1938 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