MDM Trouble Report for 2014 Mar 17

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

Problem(s) Encountered:
At one point Maxim DL stopped being able to identify a guide
star, even though there is a bright, isolated star in the field
of view.  When switching to the Guide Tab and trying to take
a single exposure that would capture the guide star, it would
alternately give one of four responses, in increasing order
of absurdity:

1. Guide star not found.
2. The brightest pixel is less than 32 pixels from the edge.
3. Please enter a value between 0 and 22.
4. Please enter a value.

I can see that there is not a brighter pixel near the edge,
and I can't imagine what parameter it expects a value of.
It also would not allow the star to be selected manually.

I restarted the connection to the camera, restarted the Maxim DL
software, rebooted the guider computer, and power cycled the
camera itself, all to no avail.  Which is very worrisome in
that I can't imagine what to do to investigate the problem
during the day, nor do I have any idea of what to try next
night.

I rather suspect that this is some kind of user error, but I 
could not identify any one of the myriad adjustable parameters
that might have been corrupted.  I'm hoping that someone has
seen this problem before and knows the obvious answer.

Another problem that seems minor now is that the FX 100
connected to mdm13ws2 doesn't seem to be working.


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Submitted on 2014 Mar 18 [0:40:39]