From: Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20090926 Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:11:39 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Saturday, September 26, 2009 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- P.Strycker P.Strycker,R.Kuruvada, NAIC 19:30 01:00 D.Voelz R.Gauthier J.Helsby DIS 01:20 06:00 NST SCHED(TWILIGHT) WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NM01/O 19:47 01:05 0 0 0 0 0.3 5.0 0 0 0 UC01/R 01:05 06:02 0 0 0.3 0 4.7 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Photometric again, and this time we had good, stable seeing for most of the night. The dewpoint and temp were stable as well, although the 3.5m dewpoint sensor apparently couldn't tell. But the 2.5m sensor and COSMIC agreed the humidity was fine. First half went very smoothly. Second half had a variety of problems. There were some minor guiding problems which I eventually concluded were caused by faint guide stars -- when I switched over to manual guiding, the blind tracking was very good and needed little intervention. There were some strange symptoms around 02:30 MDT which seemed to be related to a network slowdown -- file copy problems for the on-site observers coinciding with interruptions of streaming audio. This did not appear to affect the remote TUI user, so perhaps it was only the local network that was affected. The onsite observers had to put off their remaining file copying until morning. At 3 am, there was a power outage. This was in fact a planned outage, except that I and the Sloan observers believed it was planned for tomorrow night, so we didn't start the generator in advance as had been discussed. The telescope stopped tracking, but fortunately it was right at the end of an exposure so nothing was ruined. It took about 10 minutes to make sure the generator was working, clear the interlock, and get everything ready to go again. We discussed whether to flip the switch that would force the generator to stay on, but we thought that the return to utility power would a) be smooth, and b) happen during twilight, so we decided not to mess with the switch. In fact, the return to utility power happened shortly after 5 am, with enough of a fluctuation to stop telescope tracking -- this time it did interrupt an exposure, but the observer concluded the data would still be usable. The interlock did not get tripped this time even though the telescope stopped on all axes. Az and alt had a little more trouble recovering -- servo error on az in the first slew attempt, large magnesensor errors from alt in the second slew. Despite the problems, the good conditions ensured that it was a productive night. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UC01 D T/H 03:00 03:10 power outage UC01 D T/H 05:05 05:10 power flicker ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:42 NAIC 40( 755) 219 82 13.5 15.7 14.3 14.3 14.4 700 nm 0.70 21:55 NAIC -15( 594) -112 57 13.4 13.3 13.5 12.2 13.2 700 nm 0.64 01:28 dis-slit 120( 342) -54 65 12.8 12.7 13.1 11.8 12.8 - 0.99 Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16:00 63 30 8 260 (W) 853 clear none 17:00 62 30 2 266 (W) 868 clear none 18:00 61 28 7 284 (WNW) 924 clear none 19:00 57 24 6 297 (WNW) 947 clear none 20:00 56 27 7 332 (NNW) 982 clear none 21:00 55 29 4 350 (N) 883 clear none 22:00 55 29 2 321 (NW) 849 clear none 23:00 56 24 5 18 (NNE) 805 clear none 00:00 57 25 4 269 (W) 755 clear none 01:00 56 28 5 266 (W) 807 clear none 02:00 54 29 5 261 (W) 806 clear none 03:00 54 31 7 262 (W) 826 clear none 04:00 54 32 7 260 (W) 823 clear none 05:00 54 32 7 265 (W) 746 clear none 06:00 53 31 7 268 (W) 730 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