APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY SDSS 2.5M OBSERVING LOG Wednesday March 15, 2006 (MJD 53810) ---=== OBSERVING TEAM ===--- Night: Dan Long ET Crew: Jian Ge Julian VanEykon Zhao Bo ---=== OBSERVING PLAN ===--- ET Science! ---=== OBSERVING SUMMARY ===--- It was a good night for the ET folks tonight. Clear skies and good seeing nearly all night. They got several exposures on each of two plates (1 8019, 7 8022). Throughput of the instrument is still 1/3 to 1/2 of what is expected. This is based on the calibration lamp which uses the same fibers past the cartridge. There were some pointing irregularities, not seen two nights ago. There is a rotator offset of about -.12 degrees for both plates, and an 18 arcsecond altitude offset for cartridge 7. The offsets from Tuesday night show no such large offsets. ---=== OBSERVING LOG ===--- 01:05Z East Door Open, Fans On, Louvers Open Still getting wind gusts over the limit at sunset, but it seems to be calming down some. 01:50Z Doors Closed, Louvers Closed, Fans Off (dust spiking up) 02:25Z Doors Open, Fans On, Louvers Open Dust spike has passed. Waiting a bit longer to open to be sure it doesn't jump right back up again. The ET crew is still taking calibration frames anyhow. 03:45Z ET calibrations done. Opening, filling spectrographs etc. Skies are clear above 15 or 20 degrees. 04:30Z Cartridge 1 8019 Fiber 5 has no guide star There is a significant negative rotator offset, -.12 deg. Seeing 1.3", improving over the next half hour to 1.1" 05:30Z Had a seeing excursion over 1.5", lasting about 5 minutes. It appears that even with good seeing, the throughput deficit of the ET instrument persists. They are getting about 1/3 of the signal from their targets, that their calibrations say they should get. This is even less than the other night when the seeing wasn't very good. One way this could happen is if the target centers are actually slightly outside the science fibers, so that as the seeing improves, even less light falls into the fibers. Another possibility is the fiber coupling with the cartridge is causing more loss than the one with the calibration setup. 07:15Z Took a new guider flat to see if that might have something to do with targets not being centered on fibers. The updated flat showed essentially identical outlines to the previous one. No large scale changes or anything else indicating the flat was faulty showed up when guiding resumed. It also didn't change the throughput to the ET instrument. 08:30Z Cartridge 7 8022 No guide stars on slew. In fact it took a combination of guessing on calibration offsets and spiral pattern to find an fk5. It is somewhat odd since two nights ago there were guide stars on slew and the offsets didn't look excessive. This time there was a 18 arcsecond altitude offset and a -.11 degree rotator offset. This is the second cartridge tonight with such a large rotator offset. Did we accidentally revert to an old fiducial table again? The rot.dat table in /p/mcpbase/fiducial-tables has a date of 18-jan-06 which doesn't sound too old, and agrees with the date of the current version on the white board (v1_45). Hmmm..... Still getting lower than expected throughput, about half. Seeing is still good and skies are clear. 12:10Z Last 40 min exposure on cartridge 7 finishes and the ET is done with the telescope. 12:30Z Enclosure Closed, Fans Off, Louvers Closed. 12:45Z endNight happily transfers the cloud cam images (about all it had to do tonight). ---=== IMAGING RUN SUMMARY ===--- Run Time Stripe Lambda Last Flavor Comments Start End Begin End Frame ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---=== IMAGING RUN DETAILS ===--- ---=== SKIPPY RESULTS ===--- Run Frame nFrames stars muErr muRms nuErr nuRms rot az el --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---=== LTMATCH RESULTS ===--- Run Field nFields alt az nGood rowMean rowSig colMean colSig rot ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---=== SPECTROSCOPY DATA SUMMARY ===--- Summary Checked (y/n): QA Procedures Done (y/n): UT Exp Time flavor comment (S/N)^2 totals ========================================== b1 r1 b2 r2 ----- sequence 38004, plate -9999 ------- 00:44 38004 0.0 bias ---=== TELESCOPE OFFSETS AND SCALE I ===--- Time Instrument Az Alt Rot Scale pos offset pos offset pos offset ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 04:33Z 1 8019 191.03 0.0012 60.33 0.0027 19.57 -0.1262 1.000160 09:00Z 7 8022 111.74 0.0006 53.67 0.0053 -95.38 -0.1111 1.000190 ---=== TELESCOPE OFFSETS AND SCALE II ===--- ---=== DATA TAPE SUMMARY ===--- Goes: JL Stays: JL ---=== FOCUS LOG ===--- setmir piston Temp Wind Time Inst scale M1 M2 Foc Az Alt (C) MPH Dir filt fwhm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 04:32Z 1 8019 1.00016 -1580 -81 75 191 60.4 5.0 17 286 - 1.3 06:52Z 1 8019 1.00016 -1580 -103 20 212 48.9 5.0 16 298 - 1.2 09:00Z 7 8022 1.00019 -1876 -313 70 112 53.7 4.2 18 284 - 1.3 ---=== WEATHER LOG ===--- Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust DIMM Sky 22:55Z 45 22 27 266 (W) 2036 - Mostly Cloudy 23:28Z 47 21 35 277 (W) 1533 - Partly Cloudy 00:00Z 48 18 25 262 (W) 2498 - Partly Cloudy 00:32Z 48 16 24 253 (WSW) 1317 - Partly Cloudy 01:04Z 45 15 23 268 (W) 1070 - Partly Cloudy 01:36Z 43 13 23 272 (W) 1513 - Partly Cloudy 02:08Z 42 11 22 263 (W) 2592 - Partly Cloudy 02:40Z 41 8 18 280 (W) 1170 - Partly Cloudy 03:13Z 41 8 14 270 (W) 780 - Mostly Clear 03:45Z 41 7 14 297 (WNW) 612 - Mostly Clear 04:17Z 41 6 12 301 (WNW) 538 - Clear 04:49Z 41 7 18 302 (WNW) 499 - Clear 05:21Z 41 6 13 285 (WNW) 470 - Clear 05:53Z 41 4 12 289 (WNW) 509 - Clear 06:25Z 41 3 17 317 (NW) 444 - Clear 06:58Z 40 4 16 294 (WNW) 432 - Clear 07:30Z 40 5 17 291 (WNW) 513 - Clear 08:02Z 40 8 18 281 (W) 526 - Clear 08:34Z 40 8 19 284 (WNW) 511 - Clear 09:06Z 39 9 22 288 (WNW) 504 - Clear 09:39Z 38 10 13 266 (W) 512 - Clear 10:10Z 38 10 20 274 (W) 520 - Clear 10:43Z 38 10 21 261 (W) 479 - Clear 11:15Z 38 10 17 271 (W) 510 - Clear 11:47Z 37 10 13 273 (W) 470 - Clear 12:19Z 37 11 16 269 (W) 504 - Clear 12:51Z 37 12 14 275 (W) 436 - Clear ---=== TELESCOPE STATUS ===--- 01:05Z East Door Open, Fans On, Louvers Open 01:50Z Doors Closed, Louvers Closed, Fans Off (dust spiking up) 02:25Z Doors Open, Fans On, Louvers Open 12:30Z Enclosure Closed, Louvers Closed, Fans Off. Stowed at 30 deg alt, cartridge 7 installed. Spectro auto-fill connected. Spectro dewar 11:30Z Dewar wt 157 lb Imager dewar 11:30Z Dewar wt 166 lb No interlocks bypassed. ---=== SOFTWARE USED ===--- IOP/SOP: v4_19_0 Watcher: v2_31_0 MCP: v5_26_2 TPM: tpm_v3_3_0 AstroDa: v15_11 TCC: TCC 2.7.2.1 August 6 2004 sdssProcedures: v2_12 SoS: v5_1_0 hoggPT: v1_6_9 plate-mapper: v4_3_1 ---=== MIRROR NUMBERS ===--- PRIMARY: -------- Scale: 1.000000 MIGS TONIGHT NOMINAL Axial A -5.8530 -5.8440 Axial B -5.6870 -5.6770 Axial C 0.9400 0.9420 Trans D -10.0030 -9.9940 Lateral E 10.3759 10.3759 Lateral F 11.9507 11.9380 GALILS Commanded: 4700. -2450. 3000. -7800. 3300. 3000. Actual: 4700. -2450. 3000. -7800. 3300. 3000. SETMIR VALUES PriDesOrient: 0.00 -1.68 7.05 385.25 92.02 PriOrient: 0.00 -1.52 7.02 384.99 93.81 SECONDARY: ---------- Focus: 0.00 Air Temp.: 7.5 Alt.: 29.999997 MIGS TONIGHT NOMINAL Axial A 1.5410 1.5420 Axial B 1.0570 1.0470 Axial C 1.1710 1.1650 Trans D -0.1120 -0.1240 GALILS Commanded: 1593444. 1603661. 1554288. -6800. -5900. Actual: 1593450. 1603650. 1554300. -6800. -5900. SETMIR VALUES SecDesOrient: 1257.00 15.87 0.00 -50.00 136.76 SecOrient: 1257.00 15.88 0.00 -49.55 136.73 ---=== PROBLEMS IN DETAIL ===--- There were lots of these in the watcher mcp section this evening. Is there cause for concern or is this just related to the daytime mcp testing? DID48 interrupt with no set time (2006-03-15 17:28:33Z sdssmcp)