MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2009 May 23

Observer(s): Jules Halpern
Institution(s): Columbia U.

Instrument: CCDS

Worked for 9 hours (all night)
Conditions were Mixed most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing 0.9 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 1.0 arcsec, Overcast, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Seeing 1.0 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Light & Variable

Observing Summary:

I spent the morning checking out the equipment,
as it has been almost a week since the telescope was
used for observing.  I had a few start-up glitches
that don't rise to the level of a trouble report,
as they are more like 'features'.

1.  The mirror air conditioning coils were frosted over,
undoubtedly due to the prolonged high humidity.
A couple of hours of manual heating fixed that.

2. The CCDS aquisition camera couldn't establish the link
to its computer.  I followed everything recommended
in the manual; finally cycling the power on the camera
worked.

3.  The finder mirror wouldn't go in all the way.
It got stuck most of the way in, as could be seen
in the comparison lamp exposures, which filled
only half the CCD.  This was fixed by initializing
the MIS.

4. Commercial power glitched at 5:25pm for a couple
of seconds.  The generator came on for a couple
of minutes.  The circuit breaker for the mirror A/C
outside compressor tripped.  Now that I know to
expect the latter, I was not caught off guard.

Observing was helped by very good seeing, and clear
skies, until 1:00am when it gradually clouded over.
After a couple of hours, it cleared again and productive
observing resumed.  I was able to get spectroscopy of
several faint AGNs.

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Submitted on 2009 May 24 [5:10:19]