Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:13:18 -0600 (MDT) Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20090714 From: "Jack Dembicky" Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Tuesday, July 14, 2009 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- X.Liu X.Liu, Y.Shen DIS 21:20 22:30 00:00 01:06 H.Weaver H.Weaver, Y.Fernandez SPIcam 01:06 05:15 C.Lisse INST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- PU02/R 21:14 01:06 1.1 0 0 0 1.7 1.0 0 0 0 JH02/R 01:06 05:04 0 0 0 0 0 4.0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument chanyes, some ge time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Dembicky I did some more Agile stray light tests during afternoon checkout. BR Qrtz Lamps test with Agile pinhole images, 10s exp, r' filter /agile/straylight.001.fits - Tert at TR2. cov closed, black tape on tip of cov, 10s 2 - 3s exp 3 - 1.2s exp 4 - 3s, g' filter 5 - 1.2s, g' filter Comparing images atest.107 (yesterday) & straylight.001 (today) with same setups (except straylight.001 has dark tape over the top ~4 inches of the TR2 mirror cover I could see a definate reduction of the light source, but not eliminated. I had a couple of afternoon tours coming thru so I couldn't do anymore tests. Will continue further investigation tommorow afternoon. We had some clouds during most of the night. They came and went. No precip but we did close for about an hour 1st half just to be safe. 08:35:21, observer moved to a target and noticed streaking stars. The guider was jumpy as well. See gcam images around g0598-g0619. Telescope was in the SW I saw a slow long period oscillation on the Alt motor current as well, although other alt dataq reading looked flat. Observer stated the next image had When I tried guiding (see g0623 - 0636) the stars were oscillating in the field in the alt direction. They were tracking at non-sidereal rates (see log entry 08:47:39 for track command) but this was an oscillation not a tracking problem. Rot command voltage was also oscillating (is one of them still disconnected?) The P-P voltage was about -0.75v from the dataq of the alt motor current. The poor guiding didn't seem to be associated with the guider (running guider in manual mode showed the same oscillatory motion). It correlated well with the oscillation I was seeing on the Dataq for the Alt motor current. 30 mins later the guide star motion no longer seemed correlated to the Alt direction. See guide images 0636-0900. Things seemed to improve a little as they progressed on in the night, but we still saw streaking in the guider images due to some sort of oscillation. ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (STEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 21:46 dis-slit -7( 692) -108 39 19.3 21.8 20.6 19.9 20.1 -- 2.27 00:11 dis-slit 225( 808) -106 48 18.6 19.7 19.5 18.7 19.1 -- 2.20 01:32 SPICAM 160( 975) -24 31 18.4 18.7 18.8 18.1 18.3 R 1.68 01:34 NA2gdr 372(30372) -25 31 18.3 18.7 18.8 18.1 18.3 R 1.65 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:00 70 43 12 325 (NW) 10179 mstly cldy none 19:00 69 41 11 19 (NNE) 2599 mstly cldy none 20:00 67 41 11 47 (NE) 1899 ptly cldy none 21:00 66 40 9 89 (E) 2151 ptly cldy none 22:00 67 39 1 178 (S) 2996 ptly cldy none 23:00 68 39 5 113 (ESE) 3276 mstly cldy none 00:00 67 39 9 93 (E) 2847 ptly cldy none 01:00 65 40 9 86 (E) 2488 ptly cldy none 02:00 64 42 11 87 (E) 2506 clear none 03:00 63 43 13 113 (ESE) 2983 clear none 04:00 65 44 15 144 (SE) 3687 ptly cldy none 05:00 65 43 15 153 (SSE) 4243 ptly cldy 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 1.6