MDM Observatory 2.4m Telescope Observing Report for 2019 Sep 02

Observer(s): Jason Curtis
Institution(s): Columbia

Instrument: ModSpec

Worked for 6 hours (last half of the night)
Conditions were Photometric most of the night.
Problems were encountered, see the separate trouble report for details.

Seeing and Weather:
   Beg: Patchy Clouds, Winds Calm
   Mid: Clear, Winds Calm
   End: Clear, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

Threatening clouds kept us closed until 10:30 pm, about when John arrived. 
I started to get going with flats and HgNe comparison exposures, but then had trouble with Echelle. 
At first, the frames read out as biases, similar to the problem Eric encountered on Thursday.
We cycled the power, and it eventually began reading out, but then had these problems:
(1) flats had an abnormally high level in the blue
(2) flats had wavy noise pattern at times
(3) HgNe had weird noise pattern, and also looked like a flat+Ne (vertical stripe pattern like a flat).
Eventually, it seemed to go back to normal.
We lost a less than an hour to this, and I started taking science data at 11:30 pm, and had no problems since.

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Submitted on 2019 Sep 3 [5:35:25]