MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2011 Aug 29

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

Instrument: Osmos

Worked for 10 hours (all night)
Conditions were Non-Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds all night.
   Beg: Seeing 0.9 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 1.1 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Calm
   End: Seeing 1.2 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

Non-photometric night. One small cloud passed directly over my
target at 1 am. A few problems were encountered that I outline
here:

1) The encoders slipped twice in the night. I had to recenter
on a bright in the full 4K mode. As usual, it seems to be an issue
with the dec encoders, but it is not as persistent as it used to be.
2) The guider focus is all the way in, but it needs to move more
in that direction for optimal focus.
3) I noticed that the focus reported by the TCS was changing as
I was moving from location to location by amounts up to 
increments of 5. This was far in excess of anything I had seen
previous nights. I could not figure out whether this was a 
case where the focus was actually changing and the encoder was 
letting me know or whether the focus encoder was going wonky.



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Submitted on 2011 Aug 30 [5:49:43]