MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observing Report for 2011 Aug 24

Observer(s): Jules Halpern
Institution(s): Columbia U.

Instrument: R4k

Worked for 8 hours (most of the night)
Conditions were Non-Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds all night.
   Beg: Seeing 1.5 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Light & Variable
   Mid: Seeing 3.6 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Moderate
   End: Seeing 1.5 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Light & Variable

Observing Summary:

Given the weather conditions and new equipment, this was more of
an engineering night than a science night.  The autoguider plus
telescope performed very nicely.  The oscillations that had long
plagued us were nowhere to be seen.  The autoguider could do 
the self calibration, and the derived speeds were repeatable to
about 10%.  This was using 'tx paddle gain=0.1'  I didn't see
any reason to change that default value.  Even though the guiding
is excellent, the tracking rates could be tweaked from their
default values, including a small declination correction.
I have tentative new values, which I will refine tomorrow
before reporting them.  As the famous astronomer Yogi Berra
said, 'You can observe a lot by watching.'

The only big problem is focusing, as described yesterday.
Lightning damaged the focus controller electronics (and
many other functions of the observatory) and it is impossible
to command the focus to go directly to a particular value,
or even to creep up on it a little bit at a time.
You can only stab at it by trial and error.

The R4k has some peculiar properties that I suspect are
worse when using a small region.  See the trouble report
for some images.  Good flats are especially hard to get,
as I found out in the morning.

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Submitted on 2011 Aug 25 [5:58:41]