MDM Trouble Report for 2007 May 14

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): Pereira, Tonnesen (Columbia)
Instrument: 8k

Problem(s) Encountered:
The airconditioning system appeared to not be working. The primary mirror temperature at the start of the night (15 C) was nowhere near the set desired temperature of 8deg.
The temperature history also showed an odd, sudden jump in both ambient and mirror temperatures at around 6am the previous morning. In the end, the night turned out to be much warmer, and 
the ambient temperature in the dome never went below 15degrees, and so the seeing did not suffer too much.

We also lost pointing at the beginning of the night due to - I think - observer error. The telescope started slewing unprompted when we set the RA/DEC encoders and had to be stopped because it was nearing the horizon.
The TCS controller displayed  OUtside Soft limits  error and it took us awhile to bring it back up to zenith. We had to restart the TCS computer because even once we had the telescope pointing fairly upright, 
the error message would not go away and TCS wouldn't allow us to slew back west.
After that (and resetting the dome AZ encoder) everything went smoothly.

------------------------------

Submitted on 2007 May 15 [5:12:14]