MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observer's Report for 2007 Aug 28

Observer(s): eve armstrong
Institution(s): columbia

Instrument: templeton / direct imaging

Worked for 4 hours (last half of the night)
Conditions were Mixed most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds from dusk until 00:40.
   Beg: Patchy Clouds, Winds Calm
   Mid: Patchy Clouds, Winds Calm
   End: Seeing 1.4 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

Spectacular way to kick off the run ...

Lightning shutdown just after dinner.  Clouds kept me closed until 
just before 1am (I was a wimp and just went by the KP status.)  

When I restarted from shutdown I couldn't communicate with the ccd.
Tried restarting on hiltner, toggled the ccd power in dome - 
no luck.  All I could think of was that I'd made a mistake during
shutdown/restart, so I repeated the entire process - that fixed it.  
So this problem was probably my creation.

But I thought I'd mention one other thing, which could be a 
symptom of a real problem.  After both the first and second 
restart from shutdown, there came a continuous mechanical grating 
noise from the dome when i intialized xtcs/xmis.  I went 
out to identify the source - the sound wasn't well localized;
I suspect the filter wheel.  After killing the xmis/xtcs and 
re-initializing, the noise abruptly stopped as abruptly as it 
had begun.  Again, *both times* I restarted the system, the 
first xtcs/xmis initialization made the noise start, and 
killing/re-initializing made it stop.

G'night ..

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Submitted on 2007 Aug 29 [4:34:10]