MDM Trouble Report for 2005 Mar 14

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): John Thorstensen (Dartmouth)
Instrument: Echelle direct + 2in FW

Problem(s) Encountered:
Glitches and things to note:

- The RA hung a couple of times, not wanting to track west.  
  I cured this by slewing west (just a touch) and reacquiring.
  This looks to be the temperature-dependent problem, it's
  really a _lot_ colder tonight than last night.  

- At one point I went out to check A/C coils for icing.  There
  are animal droppings on the mirror A/C box, they look like 
  they're from a fairly big cat (our ringtail?)

- I wrote a script to take focus frames with the step 'n shoot
  method, and discovered that the 'tel offset' command in 
  CCDcom does not function.  The 'tel focus' command does
  work, and is a big improvement over setting the focus 
  manually (since you're always chasing the display update).

- Forgot to mention in main report - did  live  tests of the
  centermdm.py script, it works very nicely and does save a 
  lot of time and effort centering up on an object.

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Submitted on 2005 Mar 15 [6:53:56]