MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observing Report for 2014 Jun 26

Observer(s): Schimoia/Fausnaugh
Institution(s): OSU

Instrument: CCDS

Worked for 9 hours (all night)
Conditions were Mixed most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds from 9 pm until 1:30 .
   Beg: Seeing 1.3 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Light & Variable
   Mid: Seeing 2.2 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Seeing 2.0 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

It all started when I went outside and realized there were 
clouds scattered throughout the sky.  I should have known it 
was an ominous sign of things to come, although the clouds 
themselves had a particularly non-threatening aspect.  
Literary aspirations aside, here is the play-by-play:

First, we forgot to close the mirror cover after doing the 
Dome flats, and we opened the dome with the mirror exposed.  
We took some images with the acquisition camera during twilight 
and compared with images from the full moon.  We didn't see any 
 new  debris, although we're not sure if a) it would be visible 
in the acquisition camera at all, or b) the slit viewer covers any 
sizable area of the mirror.  (So sorry about this, we will be more 
careful over the weekend).

There were nodding issues (10'' amplitude) at HA= +2 15 
DEC=+2 15, but this has been happening all week for this object,
 and was not unexpected.

The sky was reasonably clear during sunset, but clouds moved in 
about an hour after twilight.  We lost guiding due to clouds a 
few times, and so we increased the guiding exposure time to 3-5
 seconds.  While doing this, MaximDL somehow got into the state
 where it was reading out a smaller frame when using the 
'Expose' radio button (in the 'Guide' tab).  This meant that 
there were no stars in the image. for the software to guide on.
 We eventually found a note about this at the end of the 
guiding manual--under 'Settings' in the 'Guide' tab, we hit the
 'Reset' button in the bottom right under 'Exposure Setting.'  
This entirely fixed the problem.

However, as soon as the guiding was fixed, the infamous N-S 
nodding (10  amplitude) once again reared its ugly head 
(HA=+2 59, DEC = +25 04).  We had two objects near this 
position, and the nodding forced us to move to other targets.
(We did get 2 exposures of NGC 5548 before we lost guiding the
 nodding issue started).

In all, we got our 3 standard stars and 2 usable AGN. At the 
end of the night the weather was clear.  Not submitting a trouble
report since all of these problems were solved during the night.

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Submitted on 2014 Jun 27 [4:17:03]