Pointing Errors

Sunday, June 18, 2017 12:36 PM

Problem(s) Encountered:

The telescope pointing definitely deteriorated over the run.  Big moves across the sky would sometimes have shifts of a few arcminutes in pointing, as sometimes happens with the 2.4m.  By the morning hours of last night, I had one object that did not fall within the OSMOS field of view, even after sending it to center field and reading out the full 4K field.  After trying to find a few bright stars, I went to zenith and reset using the tilt sensors.  The pointing was off by a few minutes of time.  After zeroing at zenith, I was able to find a bright star, reset the RA/Dec encoders and get on with my night.  About 45 minutes lost.


Solutions:

Pointing woes have been verified by John on his time subsequent to Ryan.  A new pointing model would be a nice thing to run, but likely isn’t worth the effort as the TCS upgrade is scheduled for later this year.