MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observing Report for 2011 Sep 06

Observer(s): Gaidos (for Lepine)
Institution(s): UH 

Instrument: CCDS

Worked for 7.5 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 from 1900 until 2300.
   Beg: Overcast, Winds Light & Variable, rain, thunder
   Mid: Cirrus, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Clear, Winds Light & Variable

Observing Summary:

Early evening storms (lightning, rain) followed by 100% cloud cover which persisted until about 10 PM.
Clouds dissipated quickly after that, and dome was opened at 10:10 PM
Lingering high clouds could be seen in the webcams.

Problems:
1) Several times the IE stopped talking with Prospero.  There was usually a timeout error, with a warning
that the status of the instrument could not be found.  Sometimes an integration started
even when there was such a warning; the header still seemed to contain all
the relevant detector information.   This seems to occur when no commands are issued to prospero fro  awhile  (>10 min). This problem was solved by exiting and restarting Prospero,
or by doing the above but also exiting and restarting  IC  on the terminal in the computer room,
then restarting Prospero.

2) the wonderful program JSkyCal that is really useful to find guide stars seems to be missing or in a new place.
 runjskgs  was missing from mcgraw (but on hill); however the java program that
it tries to run is missing entirely from the shared drive.  In the absence of the program,
I found it easier just to guide manually.

3) I can't find any information about changing the scale of the display of the CCDS acquisition camera
This information does not seem to be in the short online manual.  this would be very useful when looking 
at stars on the slit.

4) the telescope pointing was very far off (about 13 minutes of arc or 3 deg at the zenith.  
This was corrected using the tilt meters and a bright star.

The dome and telescopes worked very well.  No apparently problems with 
dome tracking or slewing.

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Submitted on 2011 Sep 7 [5:32:30]