MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observer's Report for 2003 Mar 26

Observer(s): Martin Bureau, Kambiz Fathi
Institution(s): Columbia, Nottingham

Instrument: Echelle f/7.5 direct imaging

Worked for 10.5 hours (all night)
Conditions were Mixed most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing 1.75 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Moderate
   Mid: Seeing 1.6 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Moderate
   End: Seeing 1.8 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Moderate

Observing Summary:

At the beginning of the night, tried to quantify the problem reported yesterday using with long focus sequences. 30-40% variation in the PSF across the field is very much present and the seeing is systematically better in the top-left (NW) corner of the CCD... rather depressing! It is unclear how or even if we will be able to correct for this in the data, a worrying prospect given that many of our targets cover a substantial portion of the field.

Beside that, our imaging of galaxies proceeded normally, going from galaxy to galaxy through the night (6 galaxies done).

Wild slewing of the telescope resulted in a loss of about one hour of observing (see problem report).

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Submitted on 2003 Mar 27 [6:16:51]