APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY SDSS 2.5M OBSERVING LOG Thursday April 13, 2006 (MJD 53839) ---=== OBSERVING TEAM ===--- Night: John Barentine ET: Suvrath Mahadevan Jian Ge ---=== OBSERVING PLAN ===--- ET Science! ---=== OBSERVING SUMMARY ===--- After losing half the night to clouds, we observed two ET plates tonight with a considerable number of telescope/software/cartridge problems. See Log section for full gory details. ---=== OBSERVING LOG ===--- Afternoon --------- No problems. Night ----- Started ventilating at 04:40Z. The Moon was pretty well visible through the clouds and I could see about a dozen stars scattered around the sky. Through the next several hours the clouds increased and decreased in thickness from nearly overcast to largely clear. I left the decision to open to Suvrath's discretion, as there was no longer threat of precipitation. He indicated that with the full moonlight, even a slight amount of cloud would really kill their efficiency, so we waited until the sky had almost cleared entirely to open. During the process of opening the telescope, after pulling the building and bringing the scope to 30 degrees for the spectro dewar force-fill, I opened the FF petals from the MCP as usual. Only the lower four petals, from roughly 4 o'clock to 7:30 o'clock didn't open. I cycled them closed, again through the MCP and back open. This time all of them opened. Open at 08:10Z. The scope was top-heavy on the moves to zenith for instChange and back down to 6 degrees for opening, so I decided to do a spectro force-fill even though we had less than four hours in the night. You know. Better safe than... warm. 08:30Z Cart 3 Plate E8021. GSOGTF with an additional offset of A=-4, D=-4 to center. Focus was a mess with this plate; two focus sweeps with a delta as large as 100 steps didn't show any minimum, global or otherwise. I finally had to hunt around manually and look for a best focus, which came in at -225.... much worse than the value of 0 predicted by the temperatures at the time. Also we noted significant elongation of the guide star images in fibers around the plate, as if there were strong distortion for some unclear reason. It might have been the fact that the scope was still out of thermal equilibrium while all this was going on. 10:00Z Cart 9 Plate E8027. During the instChange, Suvrath noticed that the mountaing plate for the fiber coupler on this cartridge had come completely loose and was hanging from the fiber sheaths themselves. We dismounted Cart 9, removed the affected side panel and looked around inside for the nut and bolt that held the mounting plate on. No dice. He retrieved a spare and we fixed the problem on the fly, buttoned everything up, and remounted the cartridge. That's when things *really* started to fall apart... Back in the control room, there were no GSOGTF. fk5InFiber number 10 didn't reveal anything either, so we resorted to a spiralPattern that did two laps with 10 arcsec offsets, yielding nothing. Cleared the previous plate's offsets and went back to the field. This time I found a situation that I've never seen before: there was a relatively in-focus guide star in guide fiber 5, and what looked like huge OOF donuts in all the other fibers. I hunted around in focus thinking that I'd get the other donuts to at least point me in the right direction of focus, but nothing changed all the way out to -500 steps. I tried to guide in any case, to see what it would do with one good star and huge donuts for the others. I got this error in SOP: Using 10 second gcam exposures 2006-04-14 10:13:43Z: Using da centroider because flat does not exist 2006-04-14 10:13:43Z: Using da centroider because flattener does not exist 2006-04-14 10:13:43Z: Using da centroider because maskdark does not exist 2006-04-14 10:13:43Z: Using da centroider because dark does not exist 2006-04-14 10:13:43Z: Using da centroider because mask does not exist 2006-04-14 10:13:43Z: Using da centroider because fiberData does not exist Hmmm. Okay. gotoField -gflat. Fine and dandy, but no guider image appeared in the SAODisplay window. Lost connection with the guider, perhaps? I tried a manual gcam command in TCC and got: gcam 5 0 0 I TrackAdvTime=3.52 gcam 5 0 0 W Facil="CLI"; VMSMsg="IVKEYW"; EText="unrecognized keyword - check validity and spelling" 0 0 W Facil="CLI"; VMSMsg="CMDSEG2"; EText=" " 0 0 I Facil="COPY"; VMSMsg="NOMSG"; EText="Message number 0067E015" 0 4 F Failed; Cmd="gcam 5" 0 0 I TrackAdvTime=3.56 Umm. Okay, I've never seen this TCC error message before. I'll back up completely and start over. Halted axes. Telstop, followed by telrun. New set inst=spectro command, and then begin the usual setup sequence in SOPGUI. As soon as I tried to do anything in SOPGUI, I got the error message "error writing "file6": Broken pipe" Figuring this was because of the break in the TCC connection, I backed totally out and started up SOP from scratch. initNight, goStare -bias, etc. Startup SOPGUI again. At least at that point I could take frames with the guider once again. gotoField -gflat, and predictably there were no guide stars. fk5InFiber number 10 without luck, followed by another round of spiralPattern. This time we found the fk5 star toward the end of the second lap at an offset of (A,D,R) = (-20,-10,111). Went back to that position and found a weak glow, but a further offset of A=+5 brought the star well into the FOV. Stickied offsets, gotoField, and voila.... guidestars. This time they were actually kind of in focus, too! No idea as to what this should be properly billed to, so I called it "Other hardware problem" The rest of the time on this plate was fine. Closed up at 11:50Z. endNight rejoiced, and so did we. ---=== 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): yes QA Procedures Done (y/n): n/a UT Exp Time flavor comment (S/N)^2 totals ========================================== b1 r1 b2 r2 ----- sequence 38605, plate -9999 ------- 23:55 38605 0.0 bias 00:04 38606 0.0 bias ----- sequence 38607, plate -9999 ------- 10:24 38607 0.0 bias ---=== TELESCOPE OFFSETS AND SCALE I ===--- Time Instrument Az Alt Rot Scale pos offset pos offset pos offset ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 08:43Z E8021 68.12 -0.0030 78.18 0.0087 241.73 0.0484 1.000300 11:03Z E8027 130.57 0.0027 71.37 0.0082 -61.72 0.0142 1.000150 ---=== 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 08:59Z E8021 1.00026 -2568 -1233 -225 57 81.2 12.9 10 269 -- 1.7 11:03Z E8027 1.00015 -1481 -197 -100 131 71.4 12.1 16 296 -- 1.2 ---=== WEATHER LOG ===--- Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust DIMM Sky 23:21Z 61 31 13 189 (S) 1409 - MstlyCldy 23:53Z 59 32 12 184 (S) 1291 - MstlyCldy 00:25Z 59 32 14 150 (SSE) 1527 - MstlyCldy 00:57Z 58 32 12 173 (S) 1421 - MstlyCldy 01:29Z 58 32 13 180 (S) 1637 - MstlyCldy 02:01Z 57 32 16 179 (S) 1613 - MstlyCldy 02:33Z 58 31 16 179 (S) 1666 - MstlyCldy 03:05Z 58 30 14 187 (S) 1485 - MstlyCldy 03:38Z 57 30 15 191 (S) 1398 - MstlyCldy 04:10Z 57 31 12 206 (SSW) 1505 - MstlyCldy 04:42Z 57 31 13 185 (S) 1537 - MstlyCldy 05:15Z 57 30 11 200 (SSW) 1568 - MstlyCldy 05:46Z 57 27 10 181 (S) 1405 - MstlyCldy 06:19Z 56 28 15 182 (S) 1465 - MstlyCldy 06:51Z 56 29 13 187 (S) 1487 - MstlyCldy 07:23Z 55 29 10 203 (SSW) 1457 - MstlyCldy 07:55Z 54 28 9 222 (SW) 1407 - PtlyCldy 08:26Z 54 26 6 242 (WSW) 1340 - PtlyCldy 08:56Z 54 18 8 269 (W) 1075 - MstlyClr 09:26Z 55 16 12 275 (W) 916 - MstlyClr 09:56Z 54 15 9 286 (WNW) 1008 - MstlyClr 10:27Z 54 13 15 299 (WNW) 1008 - MstlyClr 11:15Z 54 12 18 284 (WNW) 891 - PtlyCldy 11:45Z 54 12 11 289 (WNW) 891 - PtlyCldy ---=== TELESCOPE STATUS ===--- 04:40Z Doors cracked, fans on, louvers open 08:00Z Enclosure off 11:50Z Enclosure on, fans off, louvers closed Telescope parked at 121,30 with Cart 9 (Plate E8027) mounted Counterweights at 250 Spectro autofill reconnected No interlocks bypassed Dewar weights at 12:10Z Imager: 140lbs 21psi Spectro: 101lbs 25psi ---=== SOFTWARE USED ===--- IOP/SOP: v4_19_0 Watcher: v2_31_0 MCP: NOCVS|Apr 13 2006|14:52:21 TPM: tpm_v3_3_0 AstroDa: v15_11 TCC: TCC 2.7.2.1 August 6 2004 sdssProcedures: v2_13 SoS: v5_1_0 hoggPT: v1_6_9 plate-mapper: v4_3_1 ---=== MIRROR NUMBERS ===--- PRIMARY: -------- Scale: 1.000000 MIGS TONIGHT NOMINAL Axial A -5.8570 -5.8440 Axial B -5.6710 -5.6770 Axial C 0.9380 0.9420 Trans D -10.0050 -9.9940 Lateral E 10.3886 10.3759 Lateral F 11.9507 11.9380 GALILS Commanded: 4700. -2450. 3000. -7800. 3300. 3000. Actual: 4711. -2457. 2997. -7825. 3296. 3024. 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.: 14.4 Alt.: 29.999993 MIGS TONIGHT NOMINAL Axial A 1.5400 1.5420 Axial B 1.0570 1.0470 Axial C 1.1690 1.1650 Trans D -0.1270 -0.1240 GALILS Commanded: 1593312. 1603554. 1554150. -6800. -5900. Actual: 1593447. 1603642. 1554316. -6820. -5882. SETMIR VALUES SecDesOrient: 1257.00 15.87 0.00 -50.00 136.76 SecOrient: 1256.90 15.89 0.01 -49.55 136.72 ---=== PROBLEMS IN DETAIL ===---