MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2010 Jan 23

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

Instrument: modspec + echelle CCD

Worked for 0.5 hours (part of the night)
Bad weather most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   High Humidity all night.
   Beg: Patchy Clouds, Winds Light & Variable
   Mid: Seeing 1.5 arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Clear, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

Mostly clear, but lots of humidity left over from the epic storms.
Got the dome sufficiently clear of ice that I could open briefly
around midnight, when conditions were best, but RH did not 
cooperate so I closed up again.  Equipment all worked fine, for the
brief time it was in use.

I used part of the bad weather to finish a new java GUI 
skycalc for the 2.4m.  It has a couple of useful features:
- Can be used to find offset guide stars and command the 
   guide probe to move to them
- Can be used to upload  next object  coordinates to xtcs
- Displays telescope pointing location on a sky map
It appears to work nicely. 

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

Submitted on 2010 Jan 24 [5:46:45]