Problem(s) Encountered:

We discovered that if a window is placed over the Prospero Command Window while a series of exposures is being taken, the integrations will pause after the current one has read out. The proceeding one will resume once the top window is moved away from Prospero.

From Halpern:

also noted in February that  Prospero doesn''t reliably take a series of exposures.  It always stops if you move to another desktop and come back during a sequence. This was similar to what the current observer reports as happening when "a window is placed over the Prospero Command Window."  Doing a ''startup'' didn''t fix the problem for me.

No explanation was offered.  Below are my previous reports.

-Jules-

MDM Trouble Report for 2014 Feb 09

Telescope: 2.4m

Observer(s): Jules Halpern (Columbia)

Instrument: OSMOS

Problem(s) Encountered:

When executing a long series of exposures using

 go 30

it will sometimes stop at the end of an exposure

and not start the next one.  A warning that this

might happen is that the blue Time Remaining line

will stop updating in the Prospero window (even

though the exposure continues to completion),

and there are none of the usual STATUS reports

in the window that come at the end of an exposure,

even though everything is being reported normally

in the real-time display monitor.

Is 30 maybe too large a number of exposures?  It hung after

the first one, but started again after I hit Enter.

It stopped next after number 15, but then I could only

keep going after aborting the sequence and starting again.

This is very inconvenient because it means that I can''t

turn away for even 10 minutes during a 5 hour sequence.

It''s hard to maintain that level of vigilance when there

is other work that I could be doing, like data reduction.

Solutions:

I am guessing this is a legacy issue from days where cached memory came at a premium.  Another artifact is the Prospero Status screen going blank if switching to a different workspace.  While I am unsure of any fix for this issue, I think a reasonable workaround would be to “pin” both windows (Prospero Status and Command) to the current workspace.  This way, the windows will go with you from space to space.