MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2013 Mar 02

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

Instrument: Modspec + templeton

Worked for 12 hours (all night)
Conditions were Non-Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing 0.8 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Light & Variable
   Mid: Seeing 0.8 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Seeing 0.8 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Light & Variable

Observing Summary:

A much warmer night, very pleasant, and mostly clear.  The seeing
was really quite good pretty much all night, too.

I experimented today with a new way of focusing the slit-viewing
camera on the slit jaws, by letting light shine through from
underneath (it's complicated).  The focus I got this way was 
significantly different from the standard setting, which was 
done by shining lamp light on the slit.  Then, when I got on
sky, and focused the telescope using the slit viewer, the 
spectra appeared very nice and narrower on the detector than
they had last night.  I've been uneasy about the slit 
viewer focus for a long time -- it always seemed a bit 
arbitrary and the data always looked just a little off,
in retrospect -- so I think this represents a real improvement.

I believe the telescope RA readout is drifting -- see trouble.

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Submitted on 2013 Mar 3 [7:01:31]