MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observer's Report for 2001 May 25

Observer(s): Vestergaard
Institution(s): OSU

Instrument: CCDS

Worked for 2.5 hours (first half of the night)
Conditions were Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the summary for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing ~2 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing ~2 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm
   End: Seeing ~<1.5 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm, seeing very stable

Observing Summary:

Had problems with CCDS electronics in the beginning of the
night generating corrupted data. Lost ~>1 hour then
Then at midnight the TCS computer behaved wacky causing telescope
to loose its coordinates and hit the hard limit (far south).
Since then the focus changed ~250 units and the telescope may
have lost its collimation. I rebooted the tcs computer a few
times but since then I had trouble finding my targets. It may
be a combination of bad pointing and the uncollimated telescope?
I didn't get any further data and parked the telescope at 4:30am
after trying (unsuccessfully) to recover.
I have cycled the power on the tcs computer hoping it will
start ok tomorrow? Further details will be provided in the 
trouble report.

NB: Sometimes while running a task in IRAF the workstation
prompts whether to boot the computer or not. Entering `go'
resumes everything. It is a bit strange as I only have IRAF
and the instrument programs running (ie the workstation is
not overloaded). IRAF also
seems a bit unstable in its performance now and then.

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Submitted on 2001 May 26 [4:33:54]