MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observing Report for 2012 Feb 18

Observer(s): Fiorenza and Hawkins
Institution(s): CUNY GC Ohio Univ. 

Instrument: CCDS

Worked for 12 hours (all night)
Conditions were Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing 1.79 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 1.09 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm
   End: Seeing 1.31 arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable

Observing Summary:

At the beginning of the night when we were initially trying to
point the telescope to a new target, the telescope would not slew
and we received an error in the MDM 1.3 Control Panel - telescope 
would not respond to point command. The problem was that we were
asking the telescope to point to HA=##:##:## dec=##:##:##, and the
variables should be typed in lower case letters like so: ha=##:##:
## dec=##:##:##. A second problem arose a bit later when we could 
not find the slit on the image taken by the acquisition camera.
This problem was solved by increasing the exposure time. A third
problem arose when Prospero started acting up so I restarted it. 
After the restart, doagn would take exposures for only 300 seconds.
I could not figure out how to increase the exposure time. Fortunately
this happened at the end of the night and only cost me a few images.


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Submitted on 2012 Feb 19 [5:21:10]