From: Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20100314 Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:21:19 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Sunday, March 14, 2010 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- A.Verbiscer A.Verbiscer Triplespec 19:30 20:30 20:50 00:50 X.Liu X.Liu DIS --:-- --:-- INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- UV06/R 19:19 00:10 0.7 0 0.2 0 5.0 0 0 0 PU03/R 00:10 07:05 5.6 0.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan The forecast winter storm held off longer than expected; it did considerable looming and threatening, but for most of first half the sky was clear or mostly clear. I closed for a short period during first half due to a combination of clouds and a radar blip, but that was a false alarm. The actual bad weather started with a humidity jump shortly before the program changeover. After reopening, we had some trouble with multiple motion errors starting at UT 02:52 . Two errors at tracking speed, two while trying to accelerate to slew speed; all of them at altitude near 57 trying to move upward. Finally, I moved the telescope down and then up, passing the trouble spot at slew speed; after that we were able to track the target successfully. Guiding with Tspec was reasonably good, although it did have a little trouble following Saturn's moons (even when Saturn was out of the field). The tracking rate was sidereal, so obviously some drift is to be expected; I thought it would be slow enough for the guider to keep up, and it mostly did but it had to work for it. Humidity rose after midnight, so we had to close shortly before the program changeover; during second half, humidity remained high and we had some frozen precipitation in the form of freezing fog, with almost no accumulation.... yet. I did some work on the DIS spectrograph focus. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UV06 T T/H 20:52 21:05 Alt motion errors ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:39 TSPEC 250( 340) 47 48 1.0 3.4 2.8 2.6 2.4 Ks 1.18 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:00 37 17 14 246 (WSW) 668 ptly cldy none 17:00 42 19 21 267 (W) 566 ptly cldy none 18:00 40 17 21 247 (WSW) 655 ptly cldy none 19:00 36 14 22 256 (WSW) 686 mstly clr none 20:00 34 13 13 261 (W) 847 ptly cldy none 21:00 34 14 6 263 (W) 1056 clear none 22:00 31 15 6 259 (W) 1133 clear none 23:00 30 17 5 97 (E) 1122 clear none 00:00 31 14 6 96 (E) 1005 mstly clr none 01:00 26 24 13 84 (E) 961 cloudy none 02:00 25 23 26 74 (ENE) 856 cloudy none 03:00 24 23 23 76 (ENE) 682 cloudy lt snow 04:00 23 22 18 80 (E) 314 cloudy lt snow 05:00 22 21 25 67 (ENE) 302 cloudy lt snow 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: 1.7.0