MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observer's Report for 2007 Apr 17

Observer(s): Werk, Putman
Institution(s): U Michigan

Instrument: MkIII

Worked for 9 hours (all night)
Conditions were Non-Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Cirrus, Winds Calm
   Mid: Cirrus, Winds Calm
   End: Cirrus, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

Weather: Some wispy clouds loomed in the southwest at sunset, and presumably they passed
overhead shortly afterward. Throughout the night there were light clouds, but nothing
major. 

Problems: On our first target, we had to offset guide, and had serious trouble with the focus. 
Once the guide probe had moved to its slated position, we proceeded to focus the
guide camera at the new position. We could not move the focus in sufficiently to guide
on the star (FWHM was too large). Then, when we tried to refocus the guide camera on
the slit, the focus was stuck, and we were forced to reinitialize the MIS. We then managed to
refocus the guide camera on the slit.  When we tried to offset guide on another star, 
the same thing happened. So, we re-initialized, changed the rotator angle, found a star
on the slit jaws, and decided not to offset guide for the rest of the night. We have been informed
that the guide camera focus needs to be coarse focused out in the dome. Hopefully, we'll
have this issue sorted out by tomorrow, since offset guiding would be handy in some cases. 

After dwelling on this focus problem for about an hour and a half, we were able to 
observe successfully a bunch of our targets for the rest of the night. 

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Submitted on 2007 Apr 18 [5:48:14]