MDM Trouble Report for 2014 Oct 09

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): Thorstensen & Alper (Dartmouth)
Instrument: modspec + echelle CCD

Problem(s) Encountered:

A few of the spectroscopic exposures showed a very weird
problem in which the data dropped out in the red -- not 
abruptly, like a chip problem, but with the sensitivity rolling
to zero smoothly in the vicinity of H-alpha.  What was VERY weird
is that comp exposures taken at the same position didn't show this
at all -- the red lines were normal strength.  This happened
a little north of the zenith, and went away when I went south --
but then didn't recur when I went back north, so it's not
consistently position dependent.  I can't think of anything
that would do this; I wonder if it's an extreme version of 
whatever causes continua with this instrument to be unstable
sometimes.

While I was looking at the spectrograph to see if anything was
obviously amiss, I noticed that the telescope wasn't pointing
out of the dome -- it was half-occulted.  I went to reset the
dome azimuth by hand, and found that the yellow dome auto
enable light was NOT on!  I was working north, but the dome was
far from the home position, so it had apparently been tracking
the telescope OK earlier.  I didn't have any subsequent trouble
with the dome.

One last thing - the computer for the slit-viewing camera was
off at the start of the night -- it came up fine, but I see
that it's spontaneously exited the Andor program.  Not sure what
might be going on there, if anything. 

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Submitted on 2014 Oct 10 [6:45:07]