MDM Trouble Report for 2011 Dec 22

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

Problem(s) Encountered:
With all the telescope and weather problems, I forgot that I
also had issues with the CCDS data handling and readout.
I append these as points 5 and 6 below.

1. The north-side mirror cover doesn't quite open all the way.
It stops about 4 inches from the top. I tried pulling on it,
but it flops back.

2. Amazingly, when I pointed to the first target, it actually
landed in the slit!  The pointing is excellent.  However,
the slewing soon became very bad.  It takes about 5-7
iterations to move even 25 degrees.  Often the tracking stops.

3. Finally, I could not even stow the telescope when the humidity
rose above the limit.  I couldn't home the declination using any
of the available options in the TCS GUI.  For example, the default
command 

point ha=00:00:00.0 dec=+31:57:12.0 equinox=2011.98 nodome

gave this error: point m_dec not homed

I was able to close everything up, but the telescope had lost its
knowledge of the HA, RA, and Dec.  Even quitting the TCS GUI and
stopping and starting the telescope server did not solve the problem.
The HA, Dec, and Equinox fields in the GUI were blank.  After an
hour of trying, I was finally able to get values back into the TCS
GUI.  I'm not sure how.  Probably by using the Home pop-up window
to home just the Dec.  I got the telescope to zenith using the
tilt meters.  But of course the excellent pointing was lost and
will have to be recovered using a bright star, probably tomorrow
night.

Clearly the telescope has a lot of trouble moving in declination,
as Bob described to me today.  Its motion is halting, and then it
bounces at the end.  Maybe this bouncing motion confuses the TCS
and makes it stop slewing.

4. The AC in the computer room is not working.  I'm not sure when
it stopped.

5. Prospero frequently writes out the same exposure twice.  First
with the normal filename, and then a few seconds later it writes
another copy with this message:

WARNING: FITS file '/lhome/data/c111222.0074.fits' already exists, 
writing as '/lhome/data/111215CS.0lr.fits' instead            

It's NOT that the file c111222.0074.fits already existed.
It wrote the file just now and then within seconds wrote it again.
So now there are two identical files with different names.

6. A couple of times the final 100 or so rows to read out were
saturated.  It seems more than a coincidence that this read
error only occurred with fairly bright Hg-Ne exposures of 0.3 s.

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

Submitted on 2011 Dec 23 [4:53:24]
NOTE: This trouble report replaces the previous report for 2011 Dec 22