APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY SDSS 2.5M OBSERVING LOG Monday December 9, 2002 (MJD 52618) ---=== OBSERVING TEAM ===--- Swing: Mike Harvenek Night: Dan Long, Pete Newman Visitors: Alan Uomoto (JHU) ---=== OBSERVING PLAN ===--- Science. ---=== OBSERVING SUMMARY ===--- Finished plates 1126, 1059 (we think see below) and 930. Good data on plate 1143. One quarter of exposures for plate 1179 from the Tremonti aperture bias program completed with a good understanding of how to do the observations. Plate 1059 gave us very strange S/N values, for which we have no obvious explanation - see log for details. ---=== OBSERVING LOG ===--- Photometric before sunset, but moonlight means we start with spectroscopy, but the next weather system coming from the west is already above the horizon. Observing notes: 00:20Z Plate 1143, cartridge 7. Not done in two more exposures. Seeing not good to start (~2.1") but improving as the telescope equilibrated. The first science exposure (17343) did not achieve (S/N)^2>2 in camera b1, possible because we started before 18deg twilight and are running close to the moon. Thin clouds coming in from the west. Ran off design time for this plate and moved on. 02:20Z Plate 1126, cartridge 4. Done in two exposures when combined with previous night. 03:35Z Plate 1179, cartridge 1. Tremonti aperture bias program. This is our first attempt at this program, which requires multiple exposures at different offsets from the field center. At 03:35Z we gotoField. By 03:56Z we are centered on the field, scale adjusted, in focus, with the telescope offsets made sticky. We then offset to position 1, (+1.5,+2.6) arcsec, and we made a 20 minute expsoure the telescope unguided. In this time the telescope had accumulated 1.3arcsec of error in RA and ~0 in dec, as determined when we cleared the offsets and turned on the guider. The rotator error was also ~0, but there was a scale error of 0.007, which we corrected. We think this first exposure should be discarded. We make second exposure on offset number 1. This time, we used the commands: setGuiderGains xy 0 0 0 setGuiderGains phi 0 0 0 to turn the autoguider gains to zero. This let us run startGuider to monitor what the calcuated offset position were during the exposure, but stopped the guider from applying the corrections. The gains are reset (to 0.8 0 0) by the next loadCartridge command The "Error" values on the guider monitor window then give you a continuous read-out of the (negative) offsets, and manual tweaks can be applied to maintain them at the desired values. We applied corrections whenever desired-actual exceeded ~0.3 arcsec, which were required 3-4 times per 20-min exposure. Running the guider also means the actual "errors" (i.e. the offsets from the nominal field center) are recorded in /astrolog//guiderMon-.par files. We made a third exposure at offset 1 immediately without returning to the center. Again we maintain the offset error to within ~0.3 arcsec with a few corrections. Before making the next exposure at offset #1, we return to the center to check the scale error, which is negligible. We return to offset #1 and make a fourth exposure (the third good one). We repeated this on offset position 2, with returns to the center between exposures to check rotation and scale. We got two good exposures at offset #2. Cloud cover was continuing to thicken during this pointing, but it is difficult to quantify the effects on the exposures as the guider efficiency meter was only reliable during the inter-exposure centerings, and the SoS S/N plots looked chaotic enough to be decidedly unreliable. Note that we had this plate mounted and on the sky at about the start of its design time and stopped at the end of its design time. At this rate, we expect to need four full sets of observations to acquire the 21 exposures needed. We too post-science calibration exposures at the end, as called for by SoS. 06:49Z Plate 1059, cartridge 8. Done (maybe!) in three exposures. Still variable thin clouds. This plate returned a very strange set of S/N values. The first exposure gave(b1, r1, b2, r2) = (7.9, 5.0, 5.0, 1.9) on a 20-minute exposure, and subsequent exposures had the same pattern. The distribution of fibers on the plate is unusual, but the guider-reported scale error was only 0.001 and there were no other guiding anomalies. In the S/N plots from SoS, the g-band distribution of S/N on the plate is slightly centrally concentrated, but not excessively so. In the i-band distribution, the fibers for sp1 show an acceptable distribution (sp2 is suppressed by the low S/N). The only warning message from SoS relats to sky residuals on camera b2. We looked at the sky spectra with SoS's apoplotsky tool. There was one anomaly: there seem to be two sky fibers with signals a factor of ~2 above the "supersky" fit, but otherwise the supersky looks normal when compared to exposures on different plates. The SoS-reported sky count rates for r2 are almost identical to r1. We see nothing obvious in the aporeduce error file for this camera. We end up after three exposures with three of four cameras with sufficient S/N to declare the plate done, and zero S/N on camera r2. However, apoplot shows good signal in (e.g.) fibers 140 and 453 (we are unsure how fiber numbers map to spectrographs), which suggests that the SoS S/N report may be wrong. We took a smear (also poor) and a set of post-Calib exposures to see if perhaps the collimation has gone awry. The postCals were perfectly normal. We are at a loss to explain why r2 is so poor, or at least why SoS is reporting it as such. We moved on, but we decided we have nothing to lose by declaring this plate done. If SoS is wrong, this is the correct decision. If SoS is right, then we are not throwing away antyhing useful. 08:50Z Plate 930, cartridge 9. Done in six exposures. Cloud continued, but seeing now improved to ~ 1.3" despite the easterly wind. (This is a STRANGE night!). After 3 good exposures, cloud stopped us just under the minimum to declare this plate done for two exposures, but cleared enough to finish the plate on the sixth. endNight ran successfully (as far as we know!). ---=== IMAGING RUN SUMMARY ===--- Run Time Stripe Lambda Last Flavor Comments Start End Begin End Frame ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3522 21:12Z 21:37Z 100 O 105.81 111.89 45 ignore ---=== 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 ===--- UT Exp Time flavor comment (S/N)^2 totals ========================================== b1 r1 b2 r2 ----- sequence 17338, plate 1143 ------- 22:42 17338 10.0 flat 22:45 17339 2.0 arc 22:52 17340 0.0 bias ----- sequence 17340, plate 1143 ------- 2.4 4.8 5.6 4.3 Not done 00:59 17341 10.0 flat 01:01 17342 2.0 arc 01:28 17343 1200.1 target 01:56 17344 1500.1 target 02:05 17345 240.0 smear Ignore - SoS flagged it all red 02:08 17346 10.0 flat 02:10 17347 2.0 arc ----- sequence 17348, plate 1126 ------- 14.4 8.0 12.7 8.6 MJD 52618 21.2 5.5 18.5 7.1 MJD 52615 02:22 17348 10.0 flat ------------------- 02:25 17349 2.0 arc 35.6 13.5 31.2 15.7 DONE 02:53 17350 1500.1 target 03:21 17351 1500.1 target 03:28 17352 240.0 smear Poor ----- sequence 17353, plate 1179 ------- 03:51 17353 10.0 flat 03:53 17354 2.0 arc 04:19 17355 1200.1 target Offset #1, unguided, ignore 04:51 17356 1200.1 target Offset #1, hand guided to <=0.3 arcsec 05:14 17357 1200.1 target Offset #1, hand guided to <=0.3 arcsec 05:39 17358 1200.1 target Offset #1, hand guided to <=0.3 arcsec 06:05 17359 1200.1 target Offset #2, hand guided to <=0.3 arcsec 06:31 17360 1200.1 target Offset #2, hand guided to <=0.3 arcsec 06:34 17361 10.0 flat 06:37 17362 2.0 arc ----- sequence 17363, plate 1059 ------- 30.0 15.6 18.7 ??.? DONE(?) 06:54 17363 10.0 flat 06:56 17364 2.0 arc 07:20 17365 1200.1 target 07:48 17366 1500.1 target 08:16 17367 1500.1 target 08:23 17368 240.0 smear 08:30 17369 10.0 flat 08:32 17370 2.0 arc ----- sequence 17371, plate 930 ------- 38.0 17.6 45.8 24.6 DONE 08:57 17371 10.0 flat 09:00 17372 2.0 arc 09:28 17373 1500.1 target 09:56 17374 1500.1 target 10:24 17375 1500.1 target 10:33 17376 240.0 smear 11:01 17377 1500.1 target 11:33 17378 1500.1 target 11:37 17379 10.0 flat 11:39 17380 2.0 arc 12:07 17381 1500.1 target ---=== TELESCOPE OFFSETS AND SCALE I ===--- Time Instrument Az Alt Rot Scale pos offset pos offset pos offset ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 01:09Z 7 0 -25.59 0.0032 54.46 0.0015 158.62 -0.0184 0.999900 02:49Z 4 1126 -11.37 0.0053 56.70 0.0011 170.38 -0.0062 0.999830 03:57Z 1 1179 27.21 0.0046 54.07 0.0010 202.55 0.0106 1.000130 07:03Z 8 1059 91.48 0.0015 57.18 0.0001 251.82 -0.0042 1.000240 09:04Z 9 930 75.71 0.0031 77.60 0.0007 248.61 0.0120 1.000140 ---=== DATA TAPE SUMMARY ===--- Goes: JL5790 Stays: JL5791 ---=== FOCUS LOG ===--- setmir piston Temp Wind Time Inst scale M1 M2 Foc Az Alt (C) MPH Dir filt fwhm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 01:09Z 7 0 0.99990 986 1884 -100 -26 54.5 -0.2 21 38 BG38 2.1 01:22Z 7 0 0.99990 986 1938 -50 -31 53.1 0.1 16 42 BG38 1.8 02:49Z 4 1126 0.99983 1678 2471 -80 -12 56.7 -0.3 12 10 BG38 2.0 03:57Z 1 1179 1.00013 -1283 26 -80 27 54.1 -0.6 11 40 BG38 2.0 07:03Z 8 1059 1.00024 -2369 -932 -130 91 57.2 1.0 8 81 BG38 1.8 09:04Z 9 930 1.00014 -1381 -123 -100 76 77.6 1.0 7 109 BG38 1.3 ---=== WEATHER LOG ===--- Wind Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust DIMM Sky 22:41Z 31 23 1 42 (NE) 161 - Clear 23:11Z 32 13 5 36 (NE) 78 - " 23:44Z 31 15 6 17 (NNE) 92 - " 00:16Z 30 12 12 44 (NE) 90 - " 00:48Z 31 0 16 35 (NE) 80 - " 01:20Z 31 -1 21 26 (NNE) 69 - " 01:50Z 31 -2 10 13 (NNE) 43 - Thin clouds to W 02:21Z 31 -2 17 32 (NNE) 51 - " 02:53Z 31 -3 12 21 (NNE) 106 - " 03:25Z 31 -2 13 1 (N) 92 - " 03:57Z 30 0 11 40 (NE) 340 - Variable clouds 04:28Z 30 -1 16 34 (NE) 73 - " 05:01Z 31 -7 14 60 (ENE) 70 - " 05:34Z 33 -8 14 67 (ENE) 72 - " 06:06Z 33 -11 12 80 (E) 72 - " 06:37Z 33 -11 10 80 (E) 66 - " 07:09Z 34 -11 7 83 (E) 51 - " 07:42Z 34 -7 8 80 (E) 57 - " 08:15Z 34 -6 6 86 (E) 70 - " 08:48Z 33 -6 7 108 (ESE) 56 - " 09:20Z 34 -7 5 106 (ESE) 68 - " 09:52Z 34 -7 4 125 (SE) 66 - " 10:23Z 33 -7 4 141 (SE) 80 - " 10:53Z 33 -8 3 130 (SE) 80 - " 11:23Z 33 -8 1 117 (ESE) 74 - " 11:56Z 33 -8 0 138 (SE) 75 - " 12:29Z 33 -8 1 164 (SSE) 61 - " ---=== TELESCOPE STATUS ===--- 23:00Z Fans on, doors open 23:55Z Enclosure off 12:35Z Enclosure on, fans off Status at 12:47Z: Telescope stowed at: 30 deg Instrument mounted: Cartridge 7 (again!) Counterweights at: 280 Autofill systems: On 180L LN2 dewar weights: Spectro 19 lb (just filled, low-tare weight dewar) Imager 136 lb ---=== SOFTWARE USED ===--- IOP/SOP: v3_98_0 Watcher: v2_20_0 MCP: v5_16_0 TPM: tpm_v2_18_0 AstroDa: v14_47 TCC: 2.6.8 sdssProcedures: v1_56 SoS: v4_9_13 hoggPT: v1_5_8 plate-mapper: v4_1_0 ---=== MIRROR NUMBERS ===--- PRIMARY: -------- Scale: 1.000000 MIGS TONIGHT NOMINAL Axial A 0.0790 0.0790 Axial B 0.7940 0.7970 Axial C 0.8090 0.8240 Trans D -9.0750 -9.1130 Lateral E 1.8700 1.8870 Lateral F 1.4210 1.4300 GALILS Commanded: 5400. -3700. 900. -200. 31550. 30650. Actual: 5400. -3700. 900. -200. 31550. 30650. SETMIR VALUES PriDesOrient: 0.00 -11.80 23.00 1256.90 642.10 PriOrient: 0.00 -12.16 22.81 1257.41 642.19 SECONDARY: ---------- Focus: 0.00 Air Temp.: 0.2 Alt.: 30.021615 MIGS TONIGHT NOMINAL Axial A 1.5200 1.5170 Axial B 1.1660 1.1560 Axial C 1.1020 1.0990 Trans D -0.6990 -0.7070 GALILS Commanded: 1619661. 1555321. 1576361. -3400. -7900. Actual: 1619650. 1555250. 1576350. -3400. -7900. SETMIR VALUES SecDesOrient: 1257.00 0.00 -20.00 0.00 130.98 SecOrient: 1257.03 0.00 -19.99 -0.47 130.88 ---=== PROBLEMS IN DETAIL ===---