MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observer's Report for 2007 Jul 18

Observer(s): armstrong; thompson
Institution(s): columbia

Instrument: templeton/direct

Worked for 2.5 hours (part of the night)
Conditions were Mixed most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds from dusk until 2:00.
   Beg: Overcast, Winds Light & Variable
   Mid: Overcast, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Seeing 1.7 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

We'd been in lightning shutdown since just before dinner.  
Gorgeous storms kept us closed until 2am.  Then it cleared 
and we got a good cv time series.

Trouble communicating with camera, utility board, and guider
camera after rebooting from shutdown:

'df templeton' didn't finish loading, and 'ut init' gave: 
'Trouble initializing.  Error communicating with utility board.'
Camera didn't respond to chip clearing.  MIS *said* it 
initialized, but guider camera wouldn't move.
 
1 Toggled autoguider power in computer room.
2 Pressed red power button off and on in comp room (this was how I 
got the MIS running again last night.)
3 Toggled ccd power on telescope.
4 Toggled ccd controller on telescope.

After each of these steps I repeated the ccdcom commands, with 
the same result.  Then tried restarting ccdcom and MIS, and 
things were suddenly fine.  So I don't know which step in my 
tinkering to credit.

This was an unneccessarily long-winded way of saying, 'I just 
need to get as good at turning things on as I am at turning 
them off.'

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Submitted on 2007 Jul 19 [4:33:28]