MDM Trouble Report for 2023 Oct 26

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): Aylin Garcia Soto (Dartmouth)
Instrument: OSMOS

Problem(s) Encountered:
I wasn't able to observe with the 2.4m because I kept getting stuck at the thorblueacq part--where we take an acquisition image of the sky and then a slit image to center the obj in the slit. The osctrtask, in pyraf, kept telling me to chance the dX and dY to very large numbers even after running a new acq image (same slit image) after the change. It’s also roughly the same dX and dY values: dX: 1018 and dY:-1626 every time even with multiple new acq images (same slit image). 

But sometimes if I continued changing the dx and dy using the large deltas, I wouldn’t be able to because it would yield a negative -Y. Or if I can, it keeps showing the same values and it also moving the guide prob into the field of view of the telescope.

I’m not sure if it’s that I’m doing that bad of a job at finding the guide star in the first place or it’s a bug. I also changed the object to see if it’s really me but I still couldn’t get past the acq part. The dx and dy were slightly different but still very large dx=1247 and dy=-1616

I also tried rotating the telescope with the “rotator” window but that didn’t help either. I only rotated it by either +1 or -1. Unless I need a large rotation deg, which I didn’t do because I’ve never rotated the telescope while observing. 

I also had to restart the guide MIS controller box 3 times when it wouldn’t let me change the dx and dy… using the following from one of the reports:

The following procedure from Eric G. fixed the problem.

1.1. In the MIS GUI: First move the guide probe back to (0,0). Do this
by entering 0 next to the x position and hitting Enter. The probe
should move. Do the same for the probe y position.

1.2. Now shut down the MIS GUI. 2.4m Setup --> Quit 

1.3. Now go to the MIS control box in the computer room. (The MIS
controller box is the silver box about 4 feet from the ground in the
middle rack facing the window). Flip the switch on the MIS
Controller box to OFF. 

1.4. Count to ten.

1.5. Flip the MIS control box switch to ON. 

1.6. On the mdm24m workstation 1: Applications --> Telescope Control --> xmis2

1.7. There should be a big red Initialize button. Click it once and
wait about ten seconds.

Is it something as simple as running the wrong version of osctrtask.py? The one I ran is under the /data/Hiltner/ directory. And I when I opened pyraf I did pyexecute(‘osctrtask.py’) and I also tried import osctrtask but both yielded the same issue.

Or should I follow: http://mdm.kpno.noao.edu/Manuals/guiderdoc/autoguiding.html next time?

So I closed early because I couldn’t figure it out.


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Submitted on 2023 Oct 26 [23:07:42]