From: Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20100103 Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2010 14:46:57 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Sunday, January 3, 2010 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- P. Kundurthy P. Kundurthy,S.Matt,J.Bary Tspec 17:20 00:03 B.Ketzeback R.McMillan Echelle,Tspec 00:08 01:08 Y.Shen Y.Shen Tspec 00:10 06:40 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- UW01/R 17:19 00:10 0 0 0 0 3.5 2.3 0 0 DD04/R 00:10 01:10 0 0 0 0 0 1.0 0 0 PU09/R 00:10 06:57 0 0 0 0 0 6.8 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan A nice clear night with moderate to very good seeing. A humidity spike nearly prompted me to close, but the dewpoint dropped before I went upstairs. Telescope and instruments mostly behaved well. There was some confusion about a stopped nod script during first half that was probably due to a poor internet connection at the observers' end. I could not find any error messages related to why the nod script stopped, some time around UT 03:27. Behavior improved after one observer switched from wireless to wired connection, and there were no repeats of the stopped script. Triplespec guiding was excellent during first half, with brighter targets and Boresight mode guiding. During second half, with much fainter targets necessitating Field Star mode, guiding didn't go so well. I believe the recent change to the instrument block has helped with Boresight mode guiding and ensures that nod offsets do move along the slit, but Field Star guiding is still dominated by the problem with differential distortions across the slitviewer. This was exacerbated by relatively high tracking drift rates in some locations (northern transits and very high altitude in the west), combined with longer slitviewer exposures which simply couldn't keep up with the tracking. For many targets we ended up guiding in Manual mode, which was rather work-intensive. There was also one point where tcam locked up and refused to permit any exposures to be taken, claiming that an exposure was already in progress. It's possible this was caused by command collision between myself and the remote observer. Restarting the tcamera and tcam nubs fixed the hangup. ------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17:40 TSPEC 75( 85) 99 39 -1.3 1.5 -0.2 -0.0 -0.2 1.20 00:13 ECHELLE -65(-1391) -124 64 -4.3 -4.7 -4.2 -5.4 -4.7 ND3 0.65 00:52 TSPEC 200( -126) -122 56 -4.4 -4.8 -4.4 -5.6 -4.8 0.90 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:00 31 19 4 259 (W) 0 clear none 17:00 30 12 1 318 (NW) 0 clear none 18:00 29 8 5 344 (NNW) 0 clear none 19:00 27 15 3 207 (SSW) 0 clear none 20:00 26 18 4 216 (SW) 0 clear none 21:00 25 17 3 241 (WSW) 0 clear none 22:00 24 20 3 212 (SSW) 0 clear none 23:00 23 16 2 335 (NNW) 0 clear none 00:00 24 16 6 319 (NW) 0 clear none 01:00 24 16 5 352 (N) 0 clear none 02:00 27 2 10 357 (N) 0 clear none 03:00 26 2 6 346 (NNW) 0 clear none 04:00 24 6 5 312 (NW) 0 clear none 05:00 24 8 8 1 (N) 0 clear none 06:00 27 8 9 344 (NNW) 0 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: 2.11.1 Current TUI version: 1.6.2