MDM Trouble Report for 2004 Jun 25

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): Thorstensen (Dartmouth)
Instrument: modspec + echelle CCD

Problem(s) Encountered:
The mirror a/c was halfhearted all day; I defrosted it and 
it still didn't cool aggressively.  And this morning I'm sorry
to say that the breaker had again tripped for no apparent 
reason.

The telescope malfunctioned far over in the east.  It refused
to finish autosetting, instead going into an infinite loop
of ka-lunk, ka-lunk, then it refused to track.  Not so far over
to the east the tracking rates needed to be set wicked high 
(like 15.3) or the stars drifted rapidly out of the guide box.
This suggests a balance problem.  The telescope operated fine
in less-unusual parts of the sky, unfortunately the time series
analysis I do requires access to large hour angles to unscramble
daily cycle-count ambiguities.

The umbilical cable appears to have broken off the cover of the 
controls at the bottom of the electrically-adjustable 
counterweight on the NW side of the telescope. This evidently 
occurred during a slew with the instrument rotated (the only way 
to go E without spilling all the LN2).  The cover is hanging 
by the wires. The wires appear to still be connected OK.
It's conceivable that this might have caused the counterweight
to move and throw the telescope out of balance, but that's 
pure speculation on my part ...


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Submitted on 2004 Jun 26 [5:05:57]