MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2019 May 12

Observer(s): Oey
Institution(s): Michigan

Instrument: CCDS

Worked for 2.5 hours (all night)
Conditions were Non-Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds from 8 until 11.
   Beg: Patchy Clouds, Winds Calm
   Mid: Clear, Winds Calm
   End: Clear, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

Had several problems rebooting the whole system after ligntning 
shutdown.  Documentation for recovery from lightning page does
not include starting airbags or starting prospero.  Documentation
for 2.4-m manual also does not mention starting prospero or all
the other related isis and caliban etc.  Also very confused
about the Windows Vista for running the slit viewer. Doc says
to restart the computer but the photo is not linked.  A box
in the computer room labeled slit viewer has no lights and 
does not seem to be plugged into power.  But not sur if pressing
the button is actually what makes it come back on magically.

We also wasted 2 hours in the middle of the night because the
slit viewer went blank.  It turned out that the subframe box
had been accidentally ticked, but we thought the issue was
that it was not talking to the camera.  We ended up shutting
down and rebooting the IC and hiltner a couple times and
getting messed up in the process.  Problem compounded by lack
of doc for slit viewer -- I forgot at first that there was
no manual and kept going back to the old one that is still
online and thinking that it was out of date, but having
nothing else going round and round in circles thinking it was
out of date and still finding nothign else.

Finally, prospero has been acting up.  It doesn't accept the
default directory name for runinit, so everything just gets
dumped into /data/hiltner/.  

But even worse, it then started choking on readout.  It would
seem to recover, and it claimed to have found an existing
filename with the same name (one it should not have been
using as a name in the first place) and then claimed to
rename the file.  But in reality it seems the new data were
not saved at all -- at least we cannot find them. the status window shows
strange parameters.  We had to quit and restart prospero a
few times.  But now it seems that it never saved the new
exposures we have been doing for the last 2 hours.  At least
we cannot find them.  It has copied existing files to new
file names and not saved the new data at all.  It is incredibly
disheartening and frustrating.  See file headers of the 3 fits
files in /data/hiltner and file names in 190512.  Time stamps
show duplicates.  We moved the files into that directory by
hand at the first prospero reboot.

Also, we cannot get the guider to work.  It SEEMS correlated
with the rotator.  As the other night, all was fine until
we rotated.  Observing a globular cluster, there sould be
lots of stars in the guider cam, even without setting the
new rotator angle in Jskycalc.  But the guider cam looks
like no photons are received.  So we've been guiding by hand.


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Submitted on 2019 May 13 [4:25:14]