Why and What: The MDM telescopes point pretty well, but not well enough to put your object dead in the slit if you're doing slit spectroscopy with CCDS, Modspec, or Mark III. The guide-star based strategy outlined here is very useful, but it's still a great help to be able to hop over to a nearby bright star (with known coordinates) to see where the object will fall in the slit-viewing camera when you go back to it.

The very simplest (but not the best!) way to do this with the 2.4m is to go to a star from the Bright Star Catalogue. The xtcs lets you load the "Nearest Bright" star coordinate automatically; it's an option in the "Coords" menu. But this is less than ideal (unless you're totally lost and need something unmistakable). The nearest bright star is typically several degrees away, so (a)it takes significant time to get there, and (b) this far from the target, the telescope's pointing offsets may be significantly different.

Here is a better way, which takes only a few minutes to set up for your whole target list. It uses the Tycho-2 astrometric catalog, which goes to about 11th magnitude and hence is much denser than the bright star catalogue.

Here's how to do it:

• If you haven't already done so, assemble a target list in the MDM pointing-list style format, which is

  		my_star   18 22 22.3  -0 12 13. 2000
  

  where the name has no blanks, and the numbers are (obviously) the RA, dec, and equinox, with the fields separated by spaces (not colons). It doesn't care which exact column things are in.
• Run my program tychoselectmdm. It will prompt for the input it needs. tychoselectmdm finds the nearest 3 suitable Tycho-2 astrometric stars (almost always much less than a degree away) for each object on your target list. It writes a new list that includes the nearby Tycho stars, like this:

  		my_star   18 22 22.3  -0 12 13. 2000
  		my_star.pt1       18 22 30.214   -0 16 04.63  2000.
  		my_star.pt2       18 22 43.136   -0 08 10.90  2000.
  		my_star.pt3       18 22 27.615   -0 05 16.87  2000.
  

  The name is always the original name with the ".pt1" etc suffix added. The stars' proper motions are accounted for; that's why the program asks for the date of the run.
• Now, when you set on your object, you can almost instantly move to one or more of the pointing standards, to see where they fall in the field. When you set back to your target, it will be in the same part of the field that the star was.

Pointing stars in action: The ".pt1" format is designed to be handy with the xtcs window on the 2.4m. After loading your coordinate list, you call up your object's coordinates by typing its name and hitting Enter. To get the pointing star all you need to do is add ".pt1" to the name and type Enter again. To get another, just delete the last digit and replace it, then again hit Enter. [Note that the GUI requires the DELETE key, not backspace.] By calling up the coordinates and hitting Send and Go as needed, you can quickly hop between the pointing stars and the target, so you can be certain you're looking at the right star.

Note that if your target is a relatively bright star, like 10th magnitude, it will probably be in the Tycho catalog, in which case the ".pt1" star will actually be your target.

Why not just re-zero the coordinates? Well, you could, and you should if your pointing starts to drift. However:

• If you blunder while re-setting the coordinates, you lose track of the telescope altogether and need to re-establish pointing by going to the zenith and using the tilt meters. This can be rather time-consuming.
• If you're far from zenith, the pointing offsets may be very different from what they are elsewhere in the sky, making it harder to find subsequent targets.