MDM Trouble Report for 2009 Oct 29

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): Julie Skinner (Dartmouth)
Instrument: Echelle

Problem(s) Encountered:
As stated in my observer's report, the telescope appeared to slip eastward occasionally.
This only happened during the middle of the night.  At first, I thought the guider could be shoving the star out of the box, but I also noticed it happening when I was not guiding.
I tried stowing the telescope and turning everything off and then restarting, but this didn't solve the problem.  In the end, I would just slew back to the target whenever it slipped.  
However, the telescope would take an unusually large amount of time to slew a small distance.  Once, I tried manually setting west (since I figured out it was slipping east), but in this
case, it seemed that the telescope was fighting me to go west.  I would set west and it would go a little bit and then just hop back east over and over.  Eventually, it stopped doing this
and I was able to work normally for most of the night.

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Submitted on 2009 Oct 29 [5:02:29]