MDM Trouble Report for 2012 Jun 17

Telescope: 1.3m
Observer(s): Jules Halpern (Columbia U.)
Instrument: Templeton

Problem(s) Encountered:
At one point the CCD wrote out a partial, garbage image.
Taking repeated exposures only gave more of the same.
I tried to do the Setup again in the Controller section
of the Owl window, hoping that all of the resets and
downloads in that procedure would fix the problem,
but it didn't.  Finally I had to restart the Owl program
using 'owl &', and go through the setup from scratch.
Then it was able to write images of the correct size and
data values.  But I was still confused for a while because
bias frames had partial streaks, which I soon realized
were star trails.  Apparently the initial crash had also
left the shutter in the open position, and bias frames
don't move the shutter.  Choosing the Open Shutter in the
Exposure Options section of Owl finally got the operation
back to normal.  Lost about 20 minutes.

By the way, the shift key on this keyboard is very sticky.


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Submitted on 2012 Jun 18 [4:50:19]