MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observer's Report for 2008 Sep 02

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

Instrument: modspec + echelle CCD

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

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing 1 arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable
   Mid: Seeing 1 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Seeing 1 arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable

Observing Summary:


An even better night.  A few clouds drifted through from time to
time, but it was close to photometric for the most part.  Seeing
was good.  And my stars almost (but not quite) cooperated.

Now that I've raised a fuss about it, the dewar temperature seems
to be behaving itself pretty well - I ran at -98 C, and it seemed
to hold whenever I checked.  We should probably adopt a policy of 
watchful waiting before opening it up and adding straps.  

Change to direct for tomorrow night, please; I wrote an email
about the dewar orientation, which is a bit baffling to think
about after a long night of observing. The bottom line is 
that Kilic and I can both reproduce
our standard orientations if the dewar is mounted like it was
on the old 4-inch filter wheel; if it has to be rotated,
I think it's best to rotate 90 degrees counterclockwise as seen 
from above, compared to its position on the old 4-in FW.  
I thought it was CW as fist (as seen from above, again) but
having played with some little models I think it's actually
CCW. 

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Submitted on 2008 Sep 3 [6:39:53]