MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observer's Report for 2003 Dec 10 Observer(s): Marshall, Pogge, DePoy Institution(s): OSU Instrument: MDM4K Filter Wheel + Templeton Worked for 6 hours (first half of the night) Conditions were Photometric most of the night. No equipment or software problems were encountered. Seeing and Weather: Beg: Seeing 1.5 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm Mid: Seeing 2 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm End: Clear, Winds Calm Observing Summary: Worked through the day until ~11pm working the MDM4K filter wheel, including observations of flats, standards, and BVRI imaging of a starburst galaxy. System is working nearly flawlessly. Control software fully integrated into xmis and ccdcom: we operated the system the same as observers would, so it will work at the 1.3m transparently. Numerous tests during the day demonstrated that the system is very light-tight (1000s darks in the daytime dome show no residual signal), and that the filter wheel's motor controller does not interfer with readout, so it is safe to change filters from the xmis during readout if so desired. Repeatability of filter positioning was tested over a wide range of hour angles and positions using observations of a pinhole mask interspersed with 20 random filter moves. The repeatability is <10 microns, even after about 1200 filter moves when the many-hour test run was complete. This figure is as predicted by the mechanical design. Shutter voltage signal to be checked tomorrow morning, doing a go 60 on 1-second focus frames as part of the shutter effect calibration we could not get the shutter to fire after the first go. If we instead wrote a script that did 60 go's with a 2sec wait between it worked fine. Darren will be putting a scope on the output of the Leach controller shutter line to see what it is actually sending out under such circumstances. Other than that, the MDM4K filter wheel is ready for regular use at the 1.3m, once we get its 4-inch filter set delivered. ------------------------------ Submitted on 2003 Dec 11 [7:38:11]