MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observer's Report for 2003 Oct 08

Observer(s): Thorstensen & Zarate
Institution(s): Dartmouth

Instrument: Echelle direct

Worked for 5 hours (off and on through the night)
Conditions were Mixed most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds from 2 until 6.
   Beg: Patchy Clouds, Winds Light & Variable
   Mid: Seeing 1 arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Seeing 1.5 arcsec, Overcast, Winds Light & Variable

Observing Summary:

A very eventful night!  Before dinner we discovered that we 
couldn't communicate with the CCD camera, and no amount of 
turning it off and on would fix it.  Bob came up and isolated
the problem in the communications board in the camera
electronics, and replaced it with a spare board, which fixed it
by around 10 PM.  By then the sky was clearing and the RH, 
though near the limit, was tolerable, so we started observing.
Around midnight, Sarah Tuttle (one of the 1.3m observers) was
stung by a scorpion; Bob called in the EMTs from KPNO to be
sure she was all right (no allergic reaction).  The sky was
photometric for a little while, then got cloudier and cloudier
till we closed around 4.  Reopened to get dawn twilight flats, 
last chance before changing to the spectrograph tomorrow.

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Submitted on 2003 Oct 9 [6:26:03]