Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20180529 From: mcmillan@apo.nmsu.edu Date: Wed, 30 May 2018 11:51:04 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Tuesday, May 29, 2018 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- B.Bolin B.Bolin NICFPS 22:55 01:02 C.Kobulnicky C.Kobulnicky TSPEC 01:18 05:20 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B D B ---------------------------------------------------------------- UW04/R 20:14 01:10 0 0 0 2.7 0.0 2.2 0 0 WY02/R 01:10 05:48 0 0 0 0 0.0 4.6 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: R.McMillan We had thin clouds at the beginning of the night, becoming near-photometric by midnight. I'm not sure what the seeing was like, because... One of the transverse actuators on the secondary got stuck. This was either revealed or perhaps triggered when I tried to home the mirror before sunset in order to correct a much more minor problem. The hardware issue wasn't fixable tonight, but we thought it might be possible to work around so long as we can still move the mirror up and down for focus. However, it seems the transverse actuator did move far enough to mess up the collimation, so when we got on sky we found significant coma and a moderately large change in pointing. I fixed the pointing but had to give up on trying to correct the coma after wasting too much time on it. Many thanks to Jon Brinkmann and Bill Ketzeback for helping with the diagnosis and the workaround plan, and especially to Conor Sayres for adjusting the mirror control software to ignore the transverse actuators so that the workaround could actually work! Hopefully the mirror can be fixed tomorrow, but if not, we do have mostly spectroscopy on sche dule for a few nights so the image quality problem isn't a show-stopper. Aside from that rather large problem, everything else worked well. There was some confusion about whether ARCSAT was going to be used and so it had been buttoned up for non-use, but once the cover was removed it was also trouble-free. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEDFNVOG) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UW04 N T/H 20:14 22:53 M2 D won't home, won't move ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp Strc Prim Sec Air filt FWHM -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 04:26 tcamera 627( 1299) -26 61 15.6 15.3 15.8 15.2 15.5 Ks 1.76 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:00 70 25 23 235 (SW) 643 mstly clr none 17:00 72 28 22 239 (WSW) 699 mstly clr none 18:00 70 26 9 246 (WSW) 757 mstly clr none 19:00 67 23 8 256 (WSW) 755 mstly clr none 20:00 63 18 17 238 (WSW) 870 mstly clr none 21:00 61 17 14 247 (WSW) 856 clear none 22:00 61 18 10 218 (SW) 774 clear none 23:00 62 19 15 265 (W) 697 clear none 00:00 61 18 10 264 (W) 725 clear none 01:00 62 19 11 276 (W) 802 clear none 02:00 61 18 16 272 (W) 836 mstly clr none 03:00 61 18 9 268 (W) 851 mstly clr none 04:00 60 18 14 266 (W) 822 clear none 05:00 60 17 13 277 (W) 873 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: 1.2.4 Current TUI version: 2.6.0