MDM Trouble Report for 2012 Dec 11

Telescope: 1.3m
Observer(s): John Thorstensen (Dartmouth)
Instrument: Modspec + templeton

Problem(s) Encountered:

First of all, the telescope interface to JSkyCalc13mGS is not
functioning -- the part which reads telescope coordinates, 
slews, and so on.  This apparently breaks the update thread, so 
the information on the screen goes stale.  The guide star 
selector does function normally.

I tried running JSkyCalc13mGS from McGraw and from mdm13ws1,
and the symptoms were the same.  Running from a terminal gave
error messages that suggested that it couldn't open a socket
to the telescope server.  The control panel GUI was running at the
same time.  The most likely cause is that the special magic
that allows both the GUI and JSkyCalc13m to open sockets isn't 
running, or has broken.

When I opened I got on a bright star, focused the telescope 
using the star image on the slit jaws, and took a spectrum
which showed a  doughnut hole  -- the telescope was way
out of focus. I tried a fainter star thinking the bright star
was probably saturated, but I got the same result!  Now, in the
afternoon I'd glanced at the slit-viewer image of the slit jaws
 to be sure that the slit jaws looked OK, and I didn't see
anything wrong then.  So I am puzzled.

In the end I stepped the telescope focus and took short spectra
of a standard star, and then found the focus that gave the
narrowest spectrum.  Then, I took the side-plate off the slit
viewing camera lens, and adjusted the barrel on the lens until
the star image looked good near the slit.  The lens had to 
move quite a ways -- maybe 1/8 turn -- to get this all in
focus.  The slit jaws illuminated by a flat lamp didn't look
all that great, but the stars were OK in the slit viewing
camera AND the spectrograph.  This is all very puzzling, but
it's working.

With everything in focus, I went to focus the guider -- and
I couldn't, because it was past the motor-mic travel.  I 
slid the motor-mic in a half-inch or so and was able to 
obtain focus. 

One more problem!  The guider computer crashed at 3 AM -- or
what it thought was 3 -- in order to install Windows updates. 
This can easily be disabled if you know the admin password,
which I don't, or it could be set to occur weekly at 10 AM or some 
innocuous time like that.

Another minor issue:  When I plug my laptop into the net, it
doesn't find an IP address for mdm13ws1.kpno.noao.edu .  I
don't know what host table it's looking at --- 

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Submitted on 2012 Dec 12 [7:03:48]