MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observing Report for 2011 Sep 03

Observer(s): Utterback/Paust
Institution(s): Dartmouth/Whitman

Instrument: R4K

Worked for 3 hours (first half of the night)
Conditions were Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds from 11:30 until 4:00.
   Beg: Seeing 1.3 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm
   Mid: Overcast, Winds Calm
   End: Overcast, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

Beautiful start to the night, got flats, centered the telescope, got it into focus.  Hit the standards and then on to the science targets.  However, it turned out that the stars we needed photometry on were simply too bright and we attempted to adjust by defocussing slightly.

However, rather than moving the ~5 points in focus we expected, the encoder jumped by something more like 30-40.  We were able to adjust it back by about 10 points but it refuses to move any further.  I'm realizing that I haven't tried moving it up a touch and then trying to go back down again.  I'll try that before bed and amend this report if anything changes.

In the end, the problem only cost us about an hour because of the clouds that came in later.

If this is a problem that I can fix, you can email me at paustne@whitman.edu and I should be up at about 2.

------------------------------

Submitted on 2011 Sep 4 [6:31:22]