MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observing Report for 2014 Jan 15

Observer(s): Simonian/Pei
Institution(s): OSU/UCI

Instrument: CCDS

Worked for 12 hours (all night)
Conditions were Non-Photometric most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing 1 arcsec, Clear, Winds Moderate
   Mid: Seeing 0.8 arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Seeing 0.8 arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable

Observing Summary:

We observed 8 AGN over the entire night. Weather was somewhat 
windy at the beginning of the night, but calmed down a little 
past the middle. As a result, seeing improved after the 
beginning of the night.

We also had some moderate guiding errors at the beginning of 
the night when the winds were higher, but after we closed the 
dome doors, the guiding stabilized.

We encountered significant NS nodding after the midnight 
standard of up to 4 arcseconds long. Minor nodding persisted 
for a while after that. This gave us some trouble in 
determining whether the focus for some images was good.

For some images, it was difficult to find an ideal focus value 
because the stars appeared to be elongated diagonally. We 
weren't sure how to deal with that.

The last AGN observation finished 5 minutes into twilight. 

We didn't encounter any technical problems during telescope 
operation. One thing to note is that the LN2 hose has a very 
small leak near the base of the probe (on the tank nearest to 
the center of the platform).

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Submitted on 2014 Jan 16 [6:59:37]