MDM Trouble Report for 2006 Sep 1

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

Problem(s) Encountered:
This really occurred the eve. of Aug 31 -- I mis-filed
yesterday's report, and they're indexed strictly by date,
one per day, and I don't want to overwrite the old one.

Several times during the night, the tracking got flaky.  In mild
cases the symptom was large guide corrections in a consistent
direction, mostly W.  This was not a guider problem, it was
the case for hand-guiding as well -- I had to really mash the
W button to keep up.  On a few occasions the telescope simply
stopped tracking, and no amount of guiding could get it back.
There wasn't any noise (e.g. loud squealing from the drives)
associated with this.  It wasn't correlated with extreme tel.
position, either -- I (deliberately) tracked into the 6h W
soft limit on a target at the end of the night, no problem.
But I then started a target at +38 degrees, 1h 45m W, and the
tracking failed at 1h 53m W.  Fortunately it was nearly the
end of the exposure, so no harm done.

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Submitted on 2006 Sep 1 [6:09:48]