MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2019 Jan 20

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

Instrument: OSMOS/B

Worked for 8 hours (off and on through 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: Seeing 1+ arcsec, Cirrus, Winds Light & Variable
   Mid: Seeing 1+ arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Light & Variable
   End: Seeing 1+ arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Light & Variable

Observing Summary:

An eventful night!  The first half had intermittent heavy cirrus 
with enough clear spots in between to get a nice velocity curve
of a magnetic CV I found in its 'on' state for the first time.
And of course there was a glorious eclipse of the moon, offering
a bit of dark time along with a lovely spectacle -- the clouds
interfered at times, but not badly.

After midnight the clouds grew thicker.  I started getting annoyed
by the guider chirping at me, and tried to open the Maxim DL
help fire to figure out how to mute it.  Somehow --- ? -- this
caused Windows 10 to try to install Maxim DL, or otherwise
do something with it, which then led to 'ghost' windows
for ds9 and a profusion of dialog boxes.  I stopped DS9,
started another copy, and tried to restart the guiding, after
a fair amount of thrashing on the website trying to locate the
very nice and up-to-date version of the manual that Eric wrote.

I found that attempting to 'track' led to an error message,
though, so I brought down the TCS.  Unbeknownst to me, that 
closes the mirror covers, and I was over a ways.  Once I 
started up again I tried to bring them up in the same 
position, and the north cover hung, leaving E and W 
down.  I went to the zenith, closed the covers, and 
reopened -- but the west petal wouldn't open.  I tilted the
telescope to the W to get some help from gravity, and the
cover popped open suddenly with an imrpressive bang. 

I still couldn't get the guider to talk to the telescope, 
so I restarted Maxim -- I think -- and this time it 
wored.  I was back in business, except it was now very
cloudy and I only got a little bit more before parking the 
telescope with the mirror closed and tracking off.

After some rest, it occurred to me that I could take spectra
of spectral type and RV standards, so I started up again
on the 2.4m and did that for a couple hours.  

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Submitted on 2019 Jan 21 [7:05:10]