MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observing Report for 2019 Jan 04

Observer(s): Podjed, Stephanie
Institution(s): Dartmouth College

Instrument: Templeton

Worked for 11 hours (most of the night)
Conditions were Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Clear, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 1.8 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Calm
   End: Seeing 1.4 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

Had a bit of a late start to the observing run; IRAF ds9 window was not at 
anticipated directory and I was not sure at first which was the correct one/
where the couple of images I had taken went. (had help from fellow grad
student). Once this got resolved, I tried to continue with data taking-
starting with getting the bright guide star centered and making sure the 
telescope was tracking with it. Seemed to be okay at first, then two errors
popped up in TCS Session Log: 

ERROR where m_ha not homed          and 
ERROR track ACK not received

Attempted to fix the first after having found it in the trouble shooting 
archives and was unable to find an reference to the second. When we tried 
to get back to tracking the guide star, the same messages came up after 
having returned the 1.3m to zenith. So had to call in reinforcement in the 
form of emailing Eric for help, which he was able to fix.

Because of these early issues, flats had to be forgone until morning and
about  3.5 hours of science was lost.

The weather was fairly good for the majority of the night; some patches of 
cirrus clouds along the N and E popped up more towards the latter middle 
part of the run, but they did not seem to disrupt any observations that much
thankfully. 


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Submitted on 2019 Jan 5 [7:44:14]