MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2011 Mar 02

Observer(s): Kathryn Kreckel
Institution(s): Columbia

Instrument: CCDS

Worked for 10 hours (all night)
Conditions were Non-Photometric most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds all night.
   Beg: Seeing 1.5 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 1.5 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Seeing 2 arcsec, Overcast, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

Had a few clouds roll past throughout the night, but otherwise a 
good night.  Observed 4 of my candidate polar ring galaxies along
both major and polar disk axes.  In rotating the instrument at one
point the angle jumped suddenly from about 65 to -595.  I was able
to fix the rotator encoder in the xtcs without any problems. 

I also noticed that sometimes the dome tried to correct in the 
wrong direction while tracking a target, so the dome error would 
increase to -15, but then it realized on its own that was wrong 
and would properly correct so the dome error went to 0.  I only 
actively noticed this once tonight, and the telescope was not 
near zeinth or anything then, and I sort of remember hearing the 
dome make more noise than expected occasionally over the past few 
nights. This didn't cause any problems, it was just kind of odd.

The end of the hose on the nitrogen flask has a leak, but I still
filled the dewar completely.

This was my first run observing with the new guider, which seems
to have lots of more complicated controls that I never quite
figured out how to use. It worked great though, and is generally
easy to use, but I do miss the beeping when it looses the target!  

Thanks for another good observing run!

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Submitted on 2011 Mar 3 [6:14:08]