MDM Trouble Report for 2008 Jan 16

Telescope: 1.3m
Observer(s): Denney & Grier (OSU)
Instrument: CCDS

Problem(s) Encountered:
Problem #1 - the most major:
We began by trying to take comp lamp spectra, flats, and biases for
calibrations.  Nothing resembling any of these types of images
actually showed up on the chip though.  I thought at first there 
was a problem with the grating, since it had just been installed
today, and Tony told me that they had not calibrated it to any 
specific wavelength, etc.

Therefore, I tried first messing with the grating, using the commands
gratzero and then trying to move somewhere after setting up the 
correct 'grooves' and 'order'.  Nothing.  We then tried doing a full
reset with the command 'greset' and then repeating above.  That still
didn't work.  Everything else seemed to be set up right, and the 
grating seemed to moving when inspected, so we decided that wasn't
the problem.
We then thought there might be an error between the computer 
systems not reading the chip correctly or something, and so 
restarted the computer systems (the IC and McGraw) and then 
reinitializing everything else.  That didn't work either.

Finally, we called Bob, and he had us cycle the power on the CCDS HE
box, and then reinitialize the IC with a seqinit command.  After
started everything back up after that and taking a comp lamp - we
finally saw spectral lines - YAY!  However, it still wasn't making
much sense which lines we were seeing - the central wavelength
was really screwed up, but we finally managed to find something
that looked familiar - ended up being ~4000A off.  That wasn't the 
last of our problems with the images though.  As seen in the 
biases most clearly (e.g. test.0030), there was some sort of 
strange signal.  Luckily, this signal went away slowly the more
exposures we took.  Everything worked fine the rest of the time
we were able to observe tonight (concerning this issue).

Problem #2:
The overscan region of all of our exposures is strangely large, 
and does not correspond to what Prospero command claims it should
be.  It started out claiming 64 pixels of overscan (this is typical
and what is should be).  However, the images actually had ~180
pixels worth of overscan region.  I attempted to change the size
of the region in Prospero command, eventually going to 0(zero)
pixels, which correctly subtracted 64 from what there was previously
but which still left ~115 pixels of overscan.  I don't know why this 
is, but I hope someone does.  I emailed Rick Pogge specifically
on this issue.

Problem #3:
The heater in the 3rd bedroom does not seem to work.  We checked
to make sure it was plugged in (which it was), and that the breaker was not 
flipped (which it wasn't).  Kate would really appreciate it if 
someone knew why her heater doesn't work.

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

Submitted on 2008 Jan 17 [7:20:45]