MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observer's Report for 2003 Apr 02

Observer(s): Martin Bureau, Davor Krajnovic
Institution(s): Columbia, Leiden

Instrument: Echelle f/7.5 direct imaging

Worked for 11 hours (all night)
Conditions were Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing 1.6 arcsec, Clear, Winds High
   Mid: Seeing 1.9 arcsec, Clear, Winds Moderate
   End: Seeing 1.6 arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable

Observing Summary:

The sky was completely clear at sunset and twilight except for a few cirrus on the South-East horizon, so we decided to attempt to calibrate our photometry. We thus took a large number of short exposures on our objects, with plenty of photometric standard stars intermingled. The conditions were probably photometric for most of the night, except for a period when the humidity shot up. However, the wind was gusty and the seeing poor.

Had it not been for the usual problem with the  wild slewing  of the telescope, we woud have been able to finish calibrating all of our high priority objects. Despite a  re-balancing  of the telescope, the tracking problems remain. In fact, they seem to have increased. Now we can not track between 0 and 15 degrees in DEC when the telescope is almost anywhere in the West (and even a bit East). We thus lost a lot of time aborting and restarting exposures in that region, where most of our objects lie (we have now done all of those elsewhere!).

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Submitted on 2003 Apr 3 [6:11:31]