Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20190620 From: cgray@apo.nmsu.edu Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2019 12:48:51 +0000 (UTC) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Thursday, June 20, 2019 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- G.Wallerstein E.M.Farrell DIS 20:23 01:04 D.Gies K.Lester, K.Shepard, ECHELLE 01:12 05:20 A.Couperus INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS NOT USED I/ROW/DN START FINISH D B D B D B D B ---------------------------------------------------------------- UW11/R 20:23 01:10 0 0 0 0 2.7 2.1 0 0 GS01/O 01:10 05:47 0 0 0 0 0.0 4.6 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- Observing Specialist: C.Gray A beautiful night to be back at APO! The weather was clear, though a little breezy. Seeing was moderate and everyone used their full time. GS01's students (Katherine Shepard and Andrew Couperus) are now officially trained! Did I tell them about the eyepiece? Uh, yeah! So we slewed around for about an hour looking at all the things and blinding ourselves with Jupiter and the Moon. UW11 had some TUI problems all night but I'm really not sure if it was TUI or her internet. Initially she kept getting disconnected until she connected with a hard line. However, the data were slow to download if they downloaded at all. Guider images almost never downloaded so I took care of setting up the field, guiding, and checking science counts. An audit was added to PR 978. No problems tonight (I think?) -------------------- It's wonderful to be back home at APO! I had a lovely time at my conference and I thought, rather than return with a song, I might regale your with stories! The story of the International Venus Conference Chapter 1: The Hike The conference, held once every three years, was initially set to occur Sept 2018 in Hokkaido, Japan. Just days before the meeting was set to begin, Japan was racked by a typhoon. Thousands were stranded in airports across the country but the conference was still on. Then, an earthquake struck. Knocking out power to all of Hokkaido, shutting down travel to the island, the conference was officially rescheduled for June 2019. Nothing would go wrong this time… In the resort town of Niseko, nestled against an active volcano, we celebrated our meeting, greeting colleagues from around the world whom we had not seen in years! An excursion was planned for the third day. There were multiple activities to choose from but the most popular option was the mountain hike followed by a trip to the onsen. Nearly 80 Venusians excitedly disembarked from the buses and started making their way down the road. Seeing an obvious trail, a small group of us began the hike, vaguely wondering why others were walking in the opposite direction. They probably just needed the bathrooms. After the first 200 steps of the nearly vertical ascent I wondered, not for the first time, if we were on the right trail… Our leader assured us this was the correct trail. And I followed, if only to get away from the crowd of Venusians (three days locked in a room with 100 people was more than enough socializing for me). Once we began slopping through sulfurous streams (this was an active volcano, after all), I was dead certain we were on the wrong trail. However, it wasn’t until we started dropping hip deep into snow-covered crevasses that the others began to voice their doubts as well. We moved onward and upward, careful but determined to reach the top. All pretense of a trail gone, jumping over crevasses, guided only by our mutual stubborn desire to reach the top, we crested what must have been the fourth “top” (there was always a higher one!). It was then that we noticed the promised view of Mount Yotei was obscured by another peak about a mile away. A peak with a viewing deck and a fair number of hikers. ...It would seem that we had, at last, identified the correct trail. Not to be dismayed, we scaled the peak of our mountain, planted our Venus flag, sat in the stone throne (there was an actual stone throne at the top!!) and proclaimed ourselves lords of the mountain! Green stones were scattered around our throne room and the geologist of the group identified the stones as raw sulfur. Straight into my pocket they went! Our trinkets in hand (or pocket), we made our way back down the trail, careful not to go single file so as to avoid the sulfur dust kicked up by each other’s feet. We reached the base of the mountain an hour before the busses were scheduled to depart; plenty of time to rest our tired muscles in the hot water of the onsen. Catching up with our fellow Venusians we (naturally) did not admit our error and simply commented on the beauty of the hike. Those that had not wimped out in the first 10 min on the real trail agreed whole-heartedly to the fun adventure! The hike really was beautiful, I only hoped it hadn’t made me too tired; I still had a presentation to write and I was set to be on stage tomorrow afternoon... ------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00:41 dcamera 509( 913) 118 45 11.4 11.6 12.2 11.7 11.5 -- 1.36 20:15 dcamera 579( 1318) 83 38 16.9 18.1 18.4 17.4 16.9 -- 1.71 20:59 dcamera 515( 1221) 43 22 16.7 17.1 17.7 16.6 16.6 -- 1.79 02:07 ecamera 483( 182) 189 64 15.3 14.7 15.3 14.7 14.8 ND3 1.09 ------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:00 73 28 16 243 (WSW) 391 clear none 17:00 70 25 15 265 (W) 476 clear none 18:00 69 25 24 247 (WSW) 572 clear none 19:00 68 24 17 250 (WSW) 438 clear none 20:00 65 21 20 257 (WSW) 423 clear none 21:00 63 19 21 265 (W) 457 clear none 22:00 62 18 24 264 (W) 392 clear none 23:00 61 18 17 259 (W) 381 clear none 00:00 61 18 21 245 (WSW) 409 clear none 01:00 60 17 21 275 (W) 647 clear none 02:00 60 14 16 275 (W) 622 clear none 03:00 58 15 19 266 (W) 489 clear none 04:00 58 14 20 266 (W) 360 clear none 05:00 57 16 18 263 (W) 311 clear none 06:00 56 21 15 265 (W) 313 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