Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20120208 From: dembicky@apo.nmsu.edu Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 13:10:43 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, February 08, 2012 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Klaene J.Dembicky, R.McMillam Echelle, DIS 17:51 06:10 Fastcam, SPIcam INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B D B ---------------------------------------------------------------- EN01/R 17:51 06:44 0 0 0 0 1.0 11.9 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: J.Dembicky During checkout I found that the TSPEC slitviewer image had 3 of 4 quads all black. power cycled leach controller, which fixed the problem. Checked pointing at Echelle port, found it to be very good. No adjustments necessary. Beat on the new Echelle slitviewer for a while. Seeing was very good, so good in fact that boresight guiding was having issues. when we defocused a little guiding worked actually better. We created a new mask for ecam, found the image was rotated incorrectly. Email sent to Fritz. Went on to do some DIS tests Russet fixed echelle mask while I continued on with more tests. DIS spectrograph vs. slitviewer focus tests 0.82 seeing, data in /dis/, X:1100 Focus Slitviewer DIS Red Blue 351(nominal) 2.8 2.532 2.705 376 2.272 2.696 401 2.229 2.882 426 2.26 3.314 (mislabeled, focus_100.0004) 451 3.481 4.705 476 3.757 5.539 351 (nominal) 2.644 2.666 326 3.213 2.953 301 4.209 3.48 Nominal focus check (356) Russet checked internal spectrograph focus and it was excellent. New Echelle slit camera seems to get hung (and need to be power cycled) whenever we do a set inst. PR submitted We then did some on-sky tests with the new slitmask (we don't like the initial results of the flat fielding after Russet fixed the rotation & position problems). PR submitted. 0.56 arc sec seeing with the Echelle We did some boresight guiding tests with echelle (and took some eAur data while we did the test). Guiding seemed happy even with the poor flatfielding. Not photometric enough for throughput measurements. I did Fastcam instead. Clouds rolled in as I was about half way into my Fastcam observations. I repeated a few measurements with Fastcam due to the clouds. Conditions improved about 1.5 hrs after the clouds rolled in so the S/N was better in the latter images. I also tried to choose some brighter stars when possible to help with the cloud situation. While we had somewhat clearish skies we further characterized ecam, mag limits and guiding limits in it's current config (no mask). Switching back to the Echelle killed the new slitviewer. We power cycled it like previously and we tried clearing out the old mask file (hub startNubs ecam) but it reported to us that ecam was not connected (the startNubs seemed to work fine). We couldn't figure out at 3AM how to get it working so left it for the daystaff to get it reconnected (nothing really important lost with not doing these tests). Closed at 03:30 to do closed dome characterizations with the new truss lamps. DIS Br. Qrtz flats taken. Data located in /dis sub-directory 120s, 60s, & 30s in R300/B400 @ default wavecenters 120s, 60s, & 30s in R1200/B1200 @ default wavecenters 120s, 60s, & 30s in R1200/B1200 @ Blue 4400A Red 6500A 120s, 60s, & 30s in R1200/B1200 @ Blue 4400A Red 8000A SPIcam new Qrtz lamps. Data in /spicam sub-directory SDSS file lamp exp(s) ave cts u' SDSS_u_Br_360s Br 360 10886 g' SDSS_g_Br_3s Br 3 21429 g' SDSS_g_Dm_17s Dm 17 26615 r' SDSS_r_Dm_3s Dm 3 25314 i' SDSS_i_Dm_1.5s Dm 1.5 24620 z' SDSS_z_Dm_2s Dm 2 24007 MSSSO U MSSSO_U_BR_360 BR 360 15131 B MSSSO_B_Br_17s Br 17 24674 V MSSSO_V_Br_2s Br 2 21817 V MSSSO_V_Dm_10s Dm 10 27122 R MSSSO_R_Dm_3s Dm 3 25861 I MSSSI_I_Dm_1.2s Dm 1.2 24009 (MSSSO_V_BR_10s is actually taken with the Dim Qrtz lamps) Ha 6563/100 Ha_Br_25s Br 25 25088 ------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:49 ECHELLE 486( -970) 29 64 3.3 5.7 4.4 5.3 3.0 ND3 0.80 19:59 dis-slit 351( -136) 44 73 3.3 4.2 3.8 3.8 3.1 -- 0.80 21:28 ECHELLE 506(-1077) -127 68 3.8 3.3 3.4 3.0 2.8 ND3 0.56 22:43 FASTCAM 456( 500) -72 61 2.9 2.7 3.1 2.5 2.2 -- 0.54 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:00 45 26 4 219 (SW) 2200 mstly clr none 17:00 40 24 2 227 (SW) 708 mstly clr none 18:00 38 24 2 293 (WNW) 556 mstly clr none 19:00 38 24 5 330 (NNW) 637 mstly clr none 20:00 38 24 3 274 (W) 529 mstly clr none 21:00 39 23 2 243 (WSW) 463 mstly clr none 22:00 37 24 4 194 (SSW) 496 mstly clr none 23:00 37 23 7 199 (SSW) 662 ptly cldy none 00:00 38 21 6 227 (SW) 848 mstly cldy none 01:00 37 21 7 206 (SSW) 970 ptly cldy none 02:00 36 21 8 230 (SW) 919 ptly cldy none 03:00 35 21 6 223 (SW) 990 ptly cldy none 04:00 35 24 7 266 (W) 1268 cloudy none 05:00 35 24 14 301 (WNW) 1295 cloudy none 06:00 35 24 9 311 (NW) 1258 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: 2.15.0 Current TUI version: 1.9.4