MDM Trouble Report for 2010 Nov 29

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): Ming Zhao (Michigan)
Instrument: TIFKAM

Problem(s) Encountered:
The observation started fine. At around 1am I went to the main 
science target of the night. After I refocused the telescope and 
positioned the star on the wanted pixels, however, the telescope 
suddenly lost the star. I wasn't sure if it was the guider or the
telescope. So I re-acquired the star and the star just kept 
drifting out of the field horizontally (i.e., in RA).
It seems the telescope was having a hard time getting the star. 
So I rebooted HILTNER, but it didn't help. Then I rebooted the 
TCS computer and re-initialized the telescope.

I was able to lock the star when I got back to the sky. 
However, the problem came back again after about half an hour. 
I could get the star back by clicking GO on xtcs and re-slewing
the telescope back. But the telescope could only keep tracking 
on the star for about 10 min. After 10min or so, the telescope 
would jump by >7arcsec in R.A., sometimes even more than an arcminute. 
This problem happened many times, until the telescope couldn't 
get the star back, and jiggling at some random places. The altitude 
was ~43.5 degs and the Azimuth was 283 degs at that point.

I moved to another star and still had the same problem. 
The telescope get the star in the field well, but can only 
track for about 10-15min. By the end of night, the telescope 
didn't home to zenith. I had to do it manually. 

Another problem was that the temperature sensors are malfunctioning. 
The temperature would jump to >20 C frequently.

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Submitted on 2010 Nov 29 [8:27:14]