Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20090708 Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 11:37:22 +0000 (UTC) From: bketzeba@apo.nmsu.edu Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, July 8, 2009 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------ M.Klaene B.Ketzeback NA2Gdr, 19:30 05:00 Fastcam 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 21:17 05:00 0 0 0 0 0 7.7 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback Completion of the hardware for the new azimuth controller was installed today. The first half of the night was spent testing and debugging the new system with Fritz. Cloud cover was pretty thick much of the night. I checked that pointing was somewhat reasonable, after needing to make a somewhat large TertYtilt (-970) to center a bright star, by slewing to 10 very bright stars around the sky. Second half I was able to get another pointing model to compare to last nights. With the cloud cover I had to often change filters or exposure times to get a good measurement. The reduced model required I remove six outliers. Still the fit was not very good. I did not implement the model at this time. Results emailed to Mark, Nick and Russet. During the pointing model I noticed that in some parts of the sky, most notably in the west and north west, there is a very pronounced (0.45V peak to peak) oscillation as seen on the azimuth motor current plots. This was first noted at UT05:21:35 tracking the sky. A smaller noiser oscillation is visible on the command voltage plots. This also correlates with pointing into the wind. The last portion of the night about all I could do on sky was fastcam measurements. I spent 30 or 40 minutes trying to find the first bright star I slewed to. I then decided to go up to the dome and verify that the TR3 eyelid was open. It was not. I switched the controls to manual and still had no control. I took the front cover off the telescope and inspected the eyelid/air clipper valve controls. I found that the control for TR3 was in manual close position (center of 3 position switch). I returned the controls for that eyelid to automatic and was able to offset a star onto the instrument. The star was off the field center by approximately 2 arcminutes in azimuth. When focusing I slewed to Vega (pointed into a moderate 6mph wind) and noticed a very large oscillation in the images of 3 to 5 Hz. There was also some visible oscillation on the dataq however it looked to have a much higher freq than what I was seeing in the images. The same oscillation was seen again at 180 degrees azimuth with respect to the wind. It was less noticable pointed out of the wind. I gave up a little after 5am. ------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23:20 GUIDER 295( 1205) 180 32 19.8 20.7 19.5 19.5 19.5 R+nd2 1.47 03:21 FASTCAM 225( 1417) 269 55 18.2 18.0 18.4 17.3 18.0 --- 0.92 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 73 38 14 264 (W) 1086 ptly cldy none 17:00 75 39 7 268 (W) 1005 ptly cldy none 18:00 71 38 7 259 (W) 1016 ptly cldy none 19:00 71 39 7 262 (W) 1067 ptly cldy none 20:00 69 41 2 259 (W) 1062 mstly clr none 21:00 68 38 5 275 (W) 952 ptly cldy none 22:00 68 37 5 262 (W) 901 mstly cldy none 23:00 67 37 5 198 (SSW) 1008 mstly cldy none 00:00 65 40 5 181 (S) 1035 mstly cldy none 01:00 65 45 5 266 (W) 1268 mstly cldy none 02:00 64 47 6 268 (W) 1735 mstly cldy none 03:00 65 46 6 263 (W) 1468 mstly cldy none 04:00 65 46 6 263 (W) 1622 mstly cldy none 05:00 61 47 7 257 (WSW) 1737 mstly 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