MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2011 Aug 24

Observer(s): Schroeder
Institution(s): Columbia

Instrument: Osmos

Worked for 4 hours (part of the night)
Conditions were Overcast most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds all night.
   Beg: Seeing 1.2 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 3 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Moderate
   End: Overcast, Winds Moderate

Observing Summary:

It was cloudy for most of the night and then when the clouds
partially lifted, the seeing was horrendous. That was promptly
followed by more clouds. All-in-all, pretty disappointing.

I noticed in the beginning of the night when there was a short
clearing that the pointing was off by a few arcminutes. Then,
later in the night, pointing was lost completely. Upon returning
the telescope to the zenith coordinates I was surprised to see
the dec tilt-meter off by about 0.73. I slewed back to level,
but this situation is a bit disturbing since we saw this two
nights ago as well in the midst of dealing with what was 
eventually diagnosed to be a corrupt TCS computer. I hope that 
the dec encoder isn't going bad.

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Submitted on 2011 Aug 25 [4:00:22]