MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2015 Dec 09

Observer(s): Steve Lawrence
Institution(s): Hofstra/Columbia

Instrument: OSMOS (imaging mode)

Worked for 8 hours (last half of the night)
Conditions were Non-Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds all night.
   Beg: Overcast, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 1.2 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Calm
   End: Seeing 1.7 arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

First few hours were completely blanketed with thick cirrus blocking all but first
magnitude stars.  Took a long time getting up to speed with OSMOS/prospero and
the guiding system---first time with both.  Had troubles with IRAF communicating
with ds9, until I found a second ds9 window the previous observers had been using.
The  set std image=imt4096  command should be run when using such a big chip.
Is the CCD temperature displayed anywhere?
I noted that when a bright or saturated star fell on the chip, particularly near the
center, a four-fold symmetry pattern was produced---cross talk between the
readout amplifiers?
I was using a narrow-band filter for this first night, and noted either the bandpass
shifted dramatically at low X pixel values or the finder camera pickoff vignettes
the CCD strongly, even when placed at the very outer limit of suitable guide stars
in JSkyCalc.
In which directory does the  Target File  get written, when you give it a name and
have it append objects into it? 

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Submitted on 2015 Dec 10 [7:39:30]