MDM Trouble Report for 2009 Jan 2

Telescope: 1.3m
Observer(s): Thorstensen and Skinner (Dartmouth)
Instrument: Mark III + echelle ccd

Problem(s) Encountered:

1) When we set on a bright star first thing, its spectrum did not 
appear on the detector.  The reason is that the slit-viewing 
optics slide on the MIS was pushed all the way in -- when it is
pushed in all the way, it does not view the slit that is actually
looking at the sky.  I remembered this having happened before, so
we could quickly fix this.  When the correct slit is being 
viewed, the inner edge of the slit-viewing optics knob should
be about 11 mm from the wall of the MIS, i.e. about 11 mm of the 
shaft should be showing.  This should be added to the instrument
change documentation for this combination of instruments.

2) Early in the night, we stepped out into the dome from the 
control room while the dome and telescope were moving, in order
to check something (I think to see if things were moving -- 
they're so quiet!).  We heard a ping like something bouncing 
off metal, and a 3/4-inch nut with a half-inch bore fell at 
our feet. We have no idea where it came from!  But everything
still seemed to work fine, so we kept going.  The nut is 
in the control room under McGraw's monitor (to be distinguished
from the nut typing on the keyboard).   

3) Also early in the night, when we were pointing north, the
status line on the TCS gui said something like  Mirror neither
open nor closed .  This eventually resolved itself  -- the 
mirror cover didn't flop closed, but evidently it lifted off
from a sensor a bit, or something.

4) Another apparently benign error message occurred frequently
during the night, especially around the time of attempted dome
motions.  It was  send failed for command dome; network
operation timed out.   The dome never actually lost track, 
though. 





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Submitted on 2009 Jan 3 [7:25:13]