MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2011 Jan 27

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

Instrument: modspec + templeton ccd

Worked for 13 hours (all night)
Conditions were Photometric most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing 1.5 arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable
   Mid: Seeing 1 arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Seeing 1 arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable

Observing Summary:

A much better night -- winds stayed low, and seeing was mostly
decent (though I had some bad seeing far over in NW at start).

A first tonight, namely the first use of the Andor slit viewing 
camera as a science instrument!  The previous night I'd found a 
system with a white-dwarf eclipse, which was obviously very fast, 
so tonight I took a series of 1-second exposures with the Andor -
with essentially no dead time because it's a frame-transfer 
device and reads very quickly.  The WD blinks out in only about
3 seconds -- I may get it later in the run with still more time
resolution, since the Andor can get up to spectacularly rapid
frame rates.  The Andor can grab the data as a FITS data cube.
During the day Bob and I set up the machine to synch to NTP, 
which it appears to be doing.

Minor stuff:
1) I somehow managed to convince myself that the slit viewer 
might be a little out of focus, so I focused it again (removing
and replacing side plate).  It might have been fine, but this
was easy enough.
2) That fan is still intermittently noisy.  It only seems to 
make noise late at night when the telescope has been on for 
a long time ... 
3) Guider focus is OK.

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Submitted on 2011 Jan 28 [20:25:48]
NOTE: This report replaces the previous 2.4m telescope
      observing report for 2011 Jan 27