Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20151024 From: mcmillan@apo.nmsu.edu Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2015 12:46:54 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Saturday, October 24, 2015 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- J.McKeever J.McKeever ECHELLE 18:50 21:10 ECHELLE 23:10 00:02 T.Murphy R.McMillan APOLLO 00:05 01:08 M.Hammergren M.Brucker SPICam 01:12 03:08 E.Schwieterman E.Schwieterman SPICam 03:10 06:25 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B D B ---------------------------------------------------------------- NM01/R 18:29 00:10 0 2.0 0 0 0.0 3.7 0 0 AP01/O 00:10 01:10 0 0 0 0 0.0 1.0 0 0 AD02/R 01:10 03:10 0 0 0 0.2 0.0 1.8 0 0 UW11/R 03:10 07:07 0 0 0 0 2.0 1.9 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan An exciting night. Humidity was borderline or high for much of the night, causing us to close for a few hours. There were a few waves of clouds but most of the time the sky was pretty clear, and seeing was mostly decent. I found some moth guts on the azimuth drive during checkout, but test slews seemed all right. While APOLLO was observing there were indications of pointing problems from the fiducials, but in fact the lunar targets were within normal pointing. There were also two instances of harmonic hum from the azimuth drives; the first one cleared on its own while tracking the moon. The second time I slewed away and then back. If there was a third occurrence I planned to stop observing and clean azimuth drives, but that didn't happen. I didn't count any time lost for this since it was only a minute here and there. Just before APOLLO's timeslot, ARCSAT began to have problems. I rebooted the computer and everything looked okay on my end, but the observer still couldn't connect. Later, Jack logged in to help with ARCSAT. In a first-time occurrence, Jack's TUI sent a number of spurious commands - first it stopped telescope tracking, then it changed the state of fans, covers, louvers, and heaters! That occurred when Jack logged in from an older TUI on a machine he doesn't normally use. He disconnected and reconnected from his normal laptop, and everything was fine. It did take me a while to find all the changes and restore things to their proper state, so I did count lost time for this. After that, everything was fine with the 3.5m, but ARCSAT still needed some coddling and attention. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AD02 S T/S 7:44 7:58 Outdated TUI sent spurious commands ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:04 ecamera 738( -467) 214 75 3.9 6.8 6.8 6.5 5.4 Clear 0.96 23:16 ecamera 646( -714) 234 41 2.9 3.1 4.0 3.2 3.1 ND3 1.30 00:13 APOLLO 446( 979) 291 55 2.1 2.4 3.1 2.5 2.2 530 1.80 01:22 SPIcam 545( 311) 247 53 1.7 2.0 2.7 2.0 1.9 r 1.10 03:20 SPIcam 550( 355) -80 42 3.7 2.5 3.0 2.7 2.9 r 0.98 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp C Dewp C MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:00 42 34 9 83 (E) 320 ptly cldy none 17:00 41 32 12 74 (ENE) 231 ptly cldy none 18:00 40 33 14 72 (ENE) 261 ptly cldy none 19:00 39 32 15 69 (ENE) 200 mstly clr none 20:00 38 34 14 72 (ENE) 280 mstly clr none 21:00 37 35 14 71 (ENE) 321 mstly clr humid 22:00 37 34 14 76 (ENE) 277 mstly clr humid 23:00 37 33 12 80 (E) 257 clear none 00:00 35 33 14 65 (ENE) 316 mstly clr none 01:00 36 31 13 78 (ENE) 290 clear none 02:00 36 31 13 80 (E) 274 clear none 03:00 37 30 9 87 (E) 201 clear none 04:00 39 30 8 86 (E) 233 clear none 05:00 37 30 11 83 (E) 177 clear none 06:00 39 27 8 85 (E) 191 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: 1.2.2 Current TUI version: 2.4.0