MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observer's Report for 2005 Jul 03

Observer(s): Jules Halpern
Institution(s): Columbia U.

Instrument: Echelle CCD Direct

Worked for 9 hours (all night)
Conditions were Photometric most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing 1.0 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 1.0 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm
   End: Seeing 1.0 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

At last, a clear night with good seeing.  At the beginning,
the dome encoder was off by about 6 degrees. It's always a 
good idea to check this and reset if necessary.  Observed
some lensed QSOs, various X-ray sources, and of course,
Deep Impact on comet Tempel 1.  The nucleus got brighter
by at least 1 magnitude, I think.  Images are available on
request.  The tracking is not well-behaved enough to follow
the comet exactly, but a good enough approximation was
achieved.  After the telescope reached an elevation of
only 11 degrees, there was almost no air in the air bags,
as designed.  But then, it takes a full 15 minutes for them
to inflate again.  Until then, the images were triangular.

By the way, don't send me any email at Columbia, as that
mail server seems to be down, as well as the Columbia
web page.  If you have to send me email today, send it
to visitor@chichon.


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Submitted on 2005 Jul 4 [5:31:01]