MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2008 Dec 20

Observer(s): M. Kilic
Institution(s): OSU/CfA

Instrument: Direct Echelle

Worked for 13 hours (all night)
Conditions were Mixed most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing 0.9 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 1.2 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm
   End: Seeing 0.9 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

Cirrus was visible at the beginning of the night, but it became
photometric after a few hours. The seeing was between 0.7-1.4 
with median seeing around 0.9-1 .

The telescope start button would not stay on at the beginning.
Even though I made sure that the platform was down, the telescope
would not start. Bob told me to disable the switch for detecting
the platform position. After I did that, the start button worked.

I lost pointing twice at the beginning. Everytime I moved to a
new object, I would lose pointing. In one case, I wanted to
move to an object 1 hr east of the meridian, but the telescope
ended up going >4 hrs east of the meridian, I'm not sure why.
I lost a total of 40 minutes for fixing the pointing (twice).
In order to not to lose pointing again, I slewed to new targets
using the hand paddle and then used the TCS Go command to
accurately center on targets.

------------------------------

Submitted on 2008 Dec 21 [7:24:07]