MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2011 Jun 16

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

Instrument: Nellie direct + Buckeye FW

Worked for 9 hours (all night)
Conditions were Non-Photometric most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds from start until 3 AM.
   Beg: Seeing 1.2 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Moderate
   Mid: Seeing 1.2 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Moderate
   End: Seeing 1.2 arcsec, Clear, Winds Moderate

Observing Summary:

Cirrusy through most of the night, with full moon.  First use 
of a Finger Lakes camera as a guider at the 2.4m - it worked 
very nicely!  The sensor is larger, so you get the full FOV
of the guider, which makes it a bit easier to set up, and 
the Maxim DL seems better optimized to it than the Andor --
it reads very quickly.  The QE and cooling are not quite as
good as the Andors, but appears more than adequate for 
guiding. 

I struggled for the first hour because of a particularly funny 
operator error.  When the crew had swapped the guide cameras
today they'd closed the Buckeye dark slide and forgotten to 
open it.  A quick call to Bob solved the problem, but while
investigating this I'd turned the dome lights on, and then 
forgotten to turn them back off!  I didn't notice since it was
still bright twilight, and since I'd already closed the 
blackout curtain in the control room.  The first target was 
a real struggle -- I attributed it to moonlit cloud -- but
I wised up with the second one.  It's amazing how much more you
can see without the dome lights on!

After that it was smooth sailing, with decent seeing and almost
all usable transparency.  

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Submitted on 2011 Jun 17 [5:27:57]