MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2011 Jun 09

Observer(s): Gray Kanarek, Mike Shara, Jackie Faherty
Institution(s): Columbia, AMNH

Instrument: TIFKAM

Worked for 9 hours (all night)
Conditions were Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing 1-1.5 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm
   Mid: Clear, Winds Calm
   End: Clear, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

Gray was trained on the telescope, having never used it before.  

It took some time to get TIFKAM in focus. 

The biggest struggle was with the autoguider -- when centering the guide star, the guider moved the telescope and pulled the star significantly off of the slit.  

In addition, when trying to move the guider the telescope didn't move predictably.  

When we tried to go without the autoguider the sources moved off of the slit very quickly on their own (after 30-60 second integrations)..

We were observing crowded fields in the Galactic plane so with a plethora of stars in the field of view,  the guider struggled to locate one
point source to fixate on.  We were hoping that someone might have a solution for this problem?  Perhaps Bob or John T.?

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Submitted on 2011 Jun 10 [5:05:46]