MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observer's Report for 2006 Jan 15

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

Instrument: echelle CCD direct + 2in FW

Worked for 8 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 1 until 4.
   Beg: Seeing 2 arcsec, Clear, Winds High
   Mid: Seeing 1.5 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds High
   End: Seeing 3+ arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds High

Observing Summary:

A cold front has blown through; tonight was a weird mix of 
photometrically clear and badly overcast intervals, highly 
variable seeing ranging from the surprisingly OK (under the 
circumstances) to horrendous.  Lost at least several hours to 
cloud.  

Since it's 9 degrees C cooler than last night, the telescope is
acting up from time to time.  I only noticed it at the end
of the night, but the symptom was glitch and stutter during
moves, during the set portion, and only in HA.  I only tracked
for a few brief exposures at the end, and those were OK. I was
able to work around the problem by manually slewing past the 
bad spot and hitting  go  again. 

Also, the MIS dark hatch seems very stiff.  Chris had operated
it the last few nights, so I don't know if it's changed.

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Submitted on 2006 Jan 16 [7:36:03]