MDM Trouble Report for 2004 Oct 31

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): Wegner. Dalton, Bonfield (Dartmouth, Oxford)
Instrument: TIFKAM

Problem(s) Encountered:
We encountered two problems tonight:

1. The tracking continued to jump in RA so that the guider lost
the guide star. This occured almost continuously over the sky
and was the worst so far for our run. We suspect that the jumping
is temperature dependant as this has been our coldest night.

2. The HAWAII detector began to gradually develop strong
interference in one of its quadrants (the lower right one in the
display. It became particularly bad after about midnight and the
progression can be seen starting with image onis.0461.fits and
later. We think that this is an electronic problem rather than
the detector dying as the affected region still sees light. We
checked the instrument for loose leads, restarted the IC and WC
computers, and the prospero, etc. programs, but this did not 
make the interference go
away. We suspect that this is either a defective component in 
the readout electronics or a loose wire in the instrument. The
other three quadrants are still working.

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Submitted on 2004 Nov 1 [3:48:33]