MDM Trouble Report for 2019 Jan 04

Telescope: 1.3m
Observer(s): Podjed, Stephanie (Dartmouth College)
Instrument: Templeton

Problem(s) Encountered:
I had a bit of a late start to the observing run do to a minor problem 
encountered at the very beginning of the night. The ds9 window that is 
associated with IRAF was not set to the anticipated directory where
my data would end up, so I had a hard time finding the correct one to be in/
where the first few images I had taken ended up since I could not tell where
they needed to be in that particular window. This is user error/ignorance and
was fixed by asking a more seasoned graduate student how to get to the 
correct directory and the differences between them for the two ds9 windows 
(IRAF vs where OWL writes to).

Once this issue finally got resolved, admittedly longer than it should have
taken, I slewed to the relatively starless field for flats; after a little while 
'ERROR dome below dropout' popped up. I could not find any documentation
for this and it seemed like the telescope should not have been at any 
directional limits, but it had somehow hit the West limit? To fix, used the 
paddle to move it away from that area of the sky and everything seemed to
be in the clear.

I continued by getting the bright guide star centered and 
making sure the telescope was tracking with it. Things seemed to be going
normally, then I noticed two errors that popped up in the TCS Session Log 
window consecutively: 

ERROR where m_ha not homed          and 
ERROR track ACK not received

The first error was found in the trouble shooting archives, so I was able to 
follow what Katie had tried by putting the 1.3m telescope back to zenith
and retry with guiding/tracking. The tip tilt sensors read correct amounts,
so it had seemed like things were okay.

Any reference to the second error could not be found.

When we tried to track the guide star again, the same messages came up.
Reinforcement was called in in the form of emailing Eric for help to see if
he knew what needed to be done to properly fix the problem and save the 
night from being a failed run. 

Eric took control of the telescope for a while to fix the issue- The 
encoders were grossly off, possibly indicating the telescope and JSkyCalc 
were confused/not properly communicating to each other. The axes had to 
be 'homed' (home ha ,  home dec  in TCS Log) and the dome was homed as
well once the axes were. Then the axes were zeroed to the tip tilt sensors, 
with a  zero  command ( zero ra=h:m:s dec=d:m:s equinox=2019.011). Next,
the telescope was stowed and JSkyCalc restarted and controls given back
to me. Once this was done, no other problems were encountered for the 
rest of the night; all progressed as expected. (Thank you so much Eric!)



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Submitted on 2019 Jan 5 [7:40:32]