From: Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20100509 Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 12:09:15 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Sunday, May 09, 2010 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- Q.Hart Q.Hart,J.Khargaria, SPIcam 20:15 00:45 J.Stocke P.Kundurthy P.Kundurthy Agile 01:10 02:25 02:50 03:10 04:30 05:35 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- CU08/R 20:00 01:10 0.4 0 0 0 4.8 0 0 0 UW03/R 01:10 05:59 1.0 0.8 0 0 1.6 1.7 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan A frustrating night in many respects, with wind playing hokey-pokey with the limit, clouds doing similar tricks with the sky, and good seeing on focus exposures which wasn't replicated on longer science exposures perhaps because of windshake. The good news was that SPIcam was working, decked out with new coolant lines. The temperature remained stable through the night and the instrument seemed fine, but it's too soon to tell if the cooling system will hold its pressure in the longer term. The telescope was not feeling so great, which caused me to be more paranoid about the wind, especially not wanting to track downward into a west wind. Several times I asked observers to move from their preferred western targets, or I closed the dome and reopened not long afterward. Telescope misbehaviors included a new unhappy noise on some slews starting in the northeast and multiple motion errors on other slews in the southwest; I reported these along with a possible pattern that fits most but not all of the failures. Agile behaved well except when I got flustered during one of the wind closures and started the nubs before the camera had reconnected; this caused it to hang up, but fortunately only one round of restarting everything was needed to get it back, and all this occurred while the wind was high so no time was lost. The abort bug and the finicky timing of the reset continues to plague us. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UW03 P T/H 04:25 04:36 multiple az motion errors ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20:23 SPICAM 175( 767) 22 62 13.7 15.1 14.2 14.2 14.2 r 0.94 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:00 60 19 21 262 (W) 843 ptly cldy none 17:00 60 14 17 264 (W) 811 ptly cldy none 18:00 60 14 25 247 (WSW) 761 ptly cldy none 19:00 60 9 27 258 (WSW) 1248 ptly cldy none 20:00 57 12 23 222 (SW) 785 ptly cldy none 21:00 56 11 27 227 (SW) 827 ptly cldy none 22:00 55 11 22 253 (WSW) 1030 ptly cldy none 23:00 54 11 23 255 (WSW) 1053 ptly cldy none 00:00 52 12 16 260 (W) 1345 mstly clr none 01:00 50 14 22 254 (WSW) 1059 ptly cldy none 02:00 49 15 26 246 (WSW) 1050 ptly cldy none 03:00 48 17 27 245 (WSW) 1025 mstly clr none 04:00 48 14 32 240 (WSW) 929 clear none 05:00 47 15 23 234 (SW) 988 clear none 06:00 45 20 28 230 (SW) 1424 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: 1.7.2