MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observing Report for 2009 Jun 26

Observer(s): John Tobin
Institution(s): Michigan

Instrument: 4K

Worked for 4.5 hours (last half of the night)
Conditions were Non-Photometric most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   Very bad weather from 1900 until 0000.
   Beg: Overcast, Winds Light & Variable, thunderstorm
   Mid: Seeing 1.2 arcsec, Overcast, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Seeing 1.5 arcsec, Clear, Winds Moderate

Observing Summary:

The evening started off cloudy and stormy. I did a lightning
shutdown at about 7:30pm. About 9pm I powered things back on
things began to clear and I opened the first time around 10pm.
As I was doing pointing the sky clouded back over and I shut down
again until midnight. During the last half of the night I observed
several standard fields and my primary target (the Trifid) in V and I
bands. However, there was intermittent cloud cover so the calibration
will likely be bad.

One strange thing happened with the TCS tonight. When I first opened
I executed an offset command in prospero 'west 600' to move 10'
west. However, after executing this command the TCS gui became
unresponsive and I had to restart the telescope server. In addition,
to the server hanging, the telescope just continued slewing west
until it ran into the soft limit. I got it out of the limits without
a problem using the virtual paddle. I'll just have to remember that
I can't offset with prospero like I do at the 2.4m.


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Submitted on 2009 Jun 27 [4:55:17]
NOTE: This report replaces the previous 1.3m telescope
      observing report for 2009 Jun 26