Summary Night Report 20100719

Nightlog 2010-07-19

SA: Amanda
SO: Fred
Others: Tim, Sophelo, Zolisa, Deon, Morgan, Ockert, Charl & Chris at
beginning, IQ team, Nic & Ted

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Summary
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* We had a mostly successful night, taking data with the StarCam for
the pointing model and doing SAMS testing. Note that we can't actually
take accurate pointing model data until the autocollimator is back on,
because the telescope points only within range of the autocollimator
(so the displayed telescope position is not the same as the OPT target
position). For now, we are setting the tracker to all zeros and moving
the telescope to take images at different azimuths. This should test
variations around the pier.

* We ran into trouble with multiple SOMMI errors, a serious tracker
failure, and a new structure error (where the radial plug pulled out
because we actually reached an extreme position). The latter was due
to the same issue that caused us to shut down early: the structure
lost encoder counts and thus did not know its location.

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Conditions evening midnight morning
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Weather: clear clear clear
Wind Dir 10m (speed; km/h): 331(15.6) 342(15.5) 335(17.9)
Seeing(MASS/DIMM): 1.17 -
Photometric: yes yes yes
RH(%): 24.8 27.5 30.0
T-Dp (ext.): 19.1 17.8 16.7

Sun set-rise (SAST): 17:55 - 07:23
Moon rise-set (SAST; phase): 12:09-02:44 (68%)