MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observing Report for 2010 Mar 10

Observer(s): Lia Corrales and Joshua Schroeder
Institution(s): Columbia

Instrument: 4K

No Observing (see comments below)
Bad weather most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Very bad weather all night.

Observing Summary:

The night started out with patchy clouds so we tried to calibrate and focus.
We noticed that the paddle gain was set to 0.1 which caused problems with the guider.
Pointing was dead on from the beginning of the night, which was a pleasant surprise.
We reset the gain to 0.02 using the tx paddle gain=0.02 in the TCS command line which fixed the problem.
At this point, clouds began to move in. 
Intermittent clouds did not allow for any successful observations.
While trying to acquire a target during our last attempt, snow flurries began falling (at 75% humidity!).
We closed immediately for the rest of the night, but there is a possibility that some flurries landed on the mirror.
It is embarrassing for J.S. that this is his second time at MDM mirror covers were open when precipitation happened.

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Submitted on 2010 Mar 11 [5:08:00]