MDM Trouble Report for 2011 Jan 1

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): Jules Halpern, Jia Liu (Columbia)
Instrument: OSMOS

Problem(s) Encountered:
Some user-generated problems and some chronic ones, caused loss of
a couple of hours.

1. I accidentally reset the RA/Dec encoder to a position at negative
elevation.  The telescope immediately started to move.  I'm not sure why;
I have never seen that happen before.  Hitting the Stop button in the
xtcs window did not stop the telescope.  I had to turn off the drives
toggle switch on the control panel.  Resetting the encoders back to the
previous position, and then turning on the drives, allowed the telescope
to remain at rest, but the pointing had been lost by about 5 degrees.
It was then recovered using the tilt meters and a bright star.  OSMOS
is very convenient to use as a wide-field finder camera in this case.

2. Starting at the end of the previous night, the guider focus motor was
evidently slipping.  Continuing tonight it got much worse, so by midnight
the best focus was a huge donut.  It's hard to understand, but the
Andor camera continued to guide.  However, it was not adequate guiding
for imaging.  So I reached in and manually moved the motor to a better
position for coarse focus.

3. On a positive note, the OSMOS shutter seems to be behaving better.
It's hard to know if this is a result of tonight's higher temperature.

4. In the afternoon I did some surgery on the surgical tubing.  It is
now a little bit shorter.


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Submitted on 2011 Jan 2 [5:41:48]
NOTE: This trouble report replaces the previous report for 2011 Jan 1