MDM Trouble Report for 2011 Jan 3

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): Shields (Ohio University)
Instrument: OSMOS

Problem(s) Encountered:
Hiltner crashed (i.e. shut itself off) during an exposure at
approx 11 pm.  At the time I was not using the computer for
any other purpose.  This required a complete restart
of OSMOS, including cycling power on the IE and HE, before it 
all worked again.  However, Hiltner then went into a sequence 
of similar spontaneous shutdowns, five in total.  The crashes 
occurred after logging in as obs24m but otherwise there was no
consistent pattern as to what was being done by me on the 
computer when it happened.  Each time required the full OSMOS
restart, if I got that far before it crashed again.  I gave 
up at 2 am and tried restarting again at 4:30 am.  

No crash so far after that, but I then encountered problems with 
acquiring my target fields, which was not a problem during the
first part of the night.  No guidestar in the expected location
and I could not match an image of the fields to my finding 
charts.  I concluded that the pointing was somehow messed up,
and went to the zenith to reset the pointing with the tilt
meters.  Still encountered problems and as an added distraction
the telescope stopped responding to the hand paddle and signals
from the guider for one source.  Operator error seems possible
for the pointing problems although I am rather baffled at this
point, having successfully zeroed the pointing on a number of
occasions in the past with other instruments.  Jules says there
is probably some offset to be factored in which I will 
investigate tomorrow.

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Submitted on 2011 Jan 4 [7:29:45]