MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observing Report for 2015 Oct 19

Observer(s): John Thorstensen
Institution(s): Dartmouth

Instrument: Andor direct + Buckeye FW

Worked for 2 hours (part of the night)
Bad weather most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   Fog from 1 AM until end.
   Beg: Patchy Clouds, Winds Light & Variable, closed for 2 hr
   Mid: Seeing 1.5 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Light & Variable, better
   End: Overcast, Winds Moderate, fog

Observing Summary:

In twilight went to get some sky flats, and was puzzled when the
counts wouldn't drop.  Turned out I'd left the dome lights on,
which is easy to do without noticing it during daylight setup.
In an ideal world one would be able to control dome lighting
remotely.

Couldn't find a first target early on because of thick high cloud,
but did get a science target in the middle of the night during
a good patch.

I operated the dome slit and dropleaf remotely using the newish
commands.  These work well.  You can see the dome from the
2.4m at night using the big flashlight, and reassure oneself 
that the shutter and dropleaf are behaving themselves.  The 
new commands were a big help getting the 1.3m closed quickly
as conditions deteriorated in the middle of the night.

The dome slit and dropleaf commands think it's raining when the 
RH is over about 80 percent, I think. The TCS reports the slit
and dropleaf status as (quote)rain(unquote) in red. (For
some reason, the trouble report editor does not allow
quote marks).

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

Submitted on 2015 Oct 20 [6:01:49]