MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observer's Report for 2007 Nov 10

Observer(s): Prieto & Watson
Institution(s): OSU

Instrument: CCDS and Retrocam

Worked for 10 hours (most of the night)
Conditions were Non-Photometric most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   High Humidity all night.
   Beg: Seeing 1.1 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 1.6 arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable, high humidity
   End: Seeing 2 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm, high humidity

Observing Summary:

We think there is something to the saying 'Mare's tails and mackerel scales, 
tall ships carry short sails.'  We saw both these types of clouds during
the day and the humidity spiked up while we were observing.  It got up to 82%
and seemed to be rising so we shut down at 2:15am.  We opened back up at 
3:50am, but the seeing was pretty bad and quite variable after re-opening.
Lovely clear skies during the high humidity stretch though.

Except for the pause for high humidity, we continued our follow up of SDSS
supernovae and other queue targets.


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We will copy the observing report from last night here and then write over last 
night's report so that we're back to the submission being for the start-of-night 
date:


MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observer's Report for 2007 Nov 10 [actually
for Nov. 9]

Observer(s): Watson & Prieto
Institution(s): OSU

Instrument: CCDS and Retrocam

Worked for 11 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: Seeing 2.0 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 1.0 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Calm
   End: Seeing 1.0 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

We opened one hour after sunset because of clouds. We started 
with bad seeing, around 2 arcsec, but it got better and we had 
seeing ~1 arcsec all night.  We probably observed through cirrus
all night. Twice during the night the dec encoder stopped 
responding (see report).  

In the afternoon, Tony worked more in the cables to try to see if 
the bias pattern finally went away. Strangely, it came back once again. 
Finally, he changed the position of the HE in power strip (like
last night) and it went away.

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Submitted on 2007 Nov 10 [5:58:35]

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Submitted on 2007 Nov 11 [6:17:08]
NOTE: This report replaces the previous 2.4m telescope
      observing report for 2007 Nov 10