MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2014 Dec 27

Observer(s): Halpern, Lucy
Institution(s): Columbia

Instrument: OSMOS

Worked for 13 hours (all night)
Conditions were Photometric most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Seeing 1.5 arcsec, Clear, Winds Moderate
   Mid: Seeing 2.5 arcsec, Clear, Winds Moderate
   End: Seeing 2. arcsec, Clear, Winds Light & Variable

Observing Summary:

Good photometric night, except for poor seeing.  The IE again lost
communication with the slit wheel once (last night it was twice).
It's been below freezing for the past couple of nights.  Down to
-4C last night and -1.8C tonight.  So I wonder if that could be a
cause.

I noticed an interesting phenomenon on the TCS monitor.  At the
bottom there is a row of ones and zeros indicating the status
of the hand paddle buttons and the corresponding signals from
the autoguider.  Ones for paddle off and zeros for autguider off.
Occasionally, they indicate that both north
and south signals are coming from the guider at the same
time (or east and west).  I would have thought that this is
impossible.  Also, I once saw a couple of on signals from the
hand paddle even though the buttons were not being pressed.
Neither of these obviously affected the telescope motion,
but it could be hard to tell because the seeing was bad and
there was a lot of image motion all the time.

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Submitted on 2014 Dec 28 [7:17:15]