MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observer's Report for 2006 Feb 09

Observer(s): Bentz and Denney
Institution(s): OSU

Instrument: CCDS

Worked for 5 hours (last half of the night)
Conditions were Mixed most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Very bad weather from 4:00 until 9:00.
   Beg: Fog/Low Clouds, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 2 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Seeing 2 arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable

Observing Summary:

The beginning of the night was lost to bad weather.  When the 
weather started clearing up, we then lost a lot of time to 
equipment difficulties.  It began when the instruments stopped
talking to each other when we were attempting to take an arc.
Restarting prospero didn't help, so we shut down caliban and 
prospero, and in the end had to do a completely fresh boot.  
Unfortunately, that section of the users manual hadn't been 
updated since the computers were changed over.  So we tried every
combination of startup procedures we could think of until we got
the correct order, or at least something that worked.  At which 
point the grating decided to get completely lost, because even
though it said that it was centered at 4250 A, the lines didn't 
make any sense when comparing to line lists.  After much furious
flipping of pages in the manuals, I happened to recognize a 
certain pattern of lines at 9300 A, which is where our grating
was actually centered.  Once the grating was told where it was
and where it was supposed to go, we couldn't find any stars in 
either the slit viewer or the guide camera.  Everything was open,
the dome was not occulting the telescope, and there weren't any
mirrors blocking the beam path.  It turns out that the 
telescope and the guider were a few hundred steps out of focus,
washing all stars into the background and turning the very 
brightest into huge donuts.  With a focused telescope and 
communicating instruments, then, we finally began our science
observing around 12:30 or so.  Later issues involved rebooting 
the guider computer after it freaked out, and a very jumpy 
telescope with wind speeds of only 5-10 mph.

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Submitted on 2006 Feb 10 [5:45:04]