MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2013 Feb 14

Observer(s): Kevin Hainline, Chien-Ting Chen
Institution(s): Dartmouth College

Instrument: OSMOS

Worked for 13 hours (all night)
Conditions were Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds from 4:30 until 13:00.
   Beg: Seeing ~1.5 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds High
   Mid: Seeing 2.4 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds High
   End: Seeing 3.0 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds High

Observing Summary:

In the beginning of the night, the conditions for observation were pretty good. 
However, when taking image flat field, 
we saw a weird semi-circle shadow in every 4k imaging flat fields.
We do not know if this is an anomaly. 

We confirmed the double peak features we observed last night. 
After UT 4:30, the seeing became worse.
 
There might also be problems in tracking: 
~ UT 5:19 (RA kept decreasing -- probably due to the wind? )
Restart tracking on TCS control box and recenter the telescope, 
Tracking seemed to have became better. 

After UT 7:00, cirrus came into the middle of the sky.
Due to the clouds and the bad seeing, we stopped taking scientific data. 
Instead, we tested the alignments of the OSMOS masks using oalign_bin2.py. 
Detailed examination on the spectra is required to confirm whether our new alignment script works. 







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Submitted on 2013 Feb 15 [6:52:52]