MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2011 Sep 01

Observer(s): Paust
Institution(s): Whitman/Dartmouth

Instrument: OSMOS

Worked for .5 hours (last half of the night)
Bad weather most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds all night.
   Beg: Clear, Winds Calm
   Mid: Clear, Winds Calm
   End: Clear, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

I've been talking to Tony in the afternoons.  Two days ago he mentioned taking pictures of rainbows down on the valley floor and over Kitt Peak itself.  That evening I got pictures of rainbows on the valley floor and over the telescopes.  Yesterday afternoon we were talking about lightning photography.  Shortly after sunset, I got an absolutely amazing photo of [I think] the Burrell Schmidt being struck by lightning.  Tomorrow I'm going to make sure that our conversation is about photometric conditions and amazing seeing!

We had pretty impressive electrical storms that started around 4:30 pm so we did a lightning shutdown.  Got some amazing pictures, but it just wasn't an astronomy night.  The wind blew over one of the spiky plants outside the  2.4m dorm.  I spent a lot of time sticking my camera lens out through the louvers in the dome.  Electrical storms finally died down about 10 pm, but it remained cloudy until about 3:30 am.  I opened up to show one of my students how it's done, we got one exposure and the clouds came back down.

I'm hoping for better conditions tomorrow

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Submitted on 2011 Sep 2 [5:13:00]