MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2013 Mar 14

Observer(s): Jacob brown, Marat Musin
Institution(s): University of Missouri Columbia

Instrument: OSMOS

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

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing 1.44 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 1.87 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm
   End: Seeing 1.67 arcsec, Clear, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

The weather was fine though out the night with clear skies. 

We had a couple issues with the sequencer of the IC. At the 
beginning of the night, the sequencer went down. With Eric's 
help, we were able
to do a cold start of the whole system, which seems to fixed 
the problem. We lost about 30 minutes of observation time.
  Later in the night around 1 am the sequencer 
went down again. We noticed the OSMOS 
temperature was -78.5 C. We stopped doing imaging and 
pointed telescope to zenith and filled OSMOS which got
the temperature under control. After the temperature  went -90 C
we restarted the IC computer which fixed the sequencer problem
and were able to go back to collecting data. We lost about
1 hour of observation time due to this. We then periodically
went and check the OSMOS temperature to make sure it did not go 
up again. We suspect that the problem with the IC could have 
been caused by the high OSMOS temperature. 

We also noticed each time filling OSMOS that the liquid nitrogen
was spraying out of the valve after 20 seconds of turning 
it on. From past experiences this takes 3-5 minutes so we are 
not sure if there is something wrong with the dewer that needs 
to be looked at. To be on the safe side we let it run for about 
3 minutes to make sure the OSMOS was filled.


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Submitted on 2013 Mar 15 [7:19:30]