MDM Trouble Report for 2009 Aug 25

Telescope: 1.3m
Observer(s): Halpern (Columbia)
Instrument: Templeton

Problem(s) Encountered:
The following feature of the TCS could potentially cause a lot of
trouble.  Suppose that you type in new coordinates, and for some
very obscure reason the R.A. is not valid but the Decl. is good.
It's not even clear to me why after seeing it.  Maybe typing
4 instead of 04 in the minutes field, for example.  Then, the
telescope will slew to the valid new declination, but remain at
the R.A. of the previous target.  You have no idea how the
telescope is moving because the GUI doesn't update the coordinates
until the end of the slew.  Maybe it's smart enough not to slew
into a limit, but it's definitely annoying.  You would think that
if the TCS considers one of the coordinate fields to be invalid,
then it would return some error message and not slew at all.

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Submitted on 2009 Aug 25 [5:12:51]