SARA 

XIANMING HAN

Butler University

none

CCD

4

4

Equipment Failure

eclipsing binary, jupiter The telescope lost tracking often. It lost tracking, but displays it was still tracking, and could not slew. Only full restart will restore tracking.

Yong Sheng

Clemson University

Dieter Hartmann

RM griz

7

3

Equipment Failure

The dome didn't move as the telescope moves. The tracking was also done.

Stephen Gillam

ERAU

None

Andor camera

5

5

Software/Control PC Issues

The system worked well until we got to about 1hr and 20 mins west of the meridian. The scope was at an airmass of 1.12 and an altitude of ~62 deg. It was no where near any of the limits. Then, the scope suffered the first of five episodes of tracking failure and/or the "unable to slew due to equipment failure". In the first two instances, reselecting the target and slewing (the short distance) to it was sufficient to get it tracking again. Over the next three hours the tracking failed three more times with the "..due equipment failure" message. I notices that the not only was the RA tracking not working, but the the scope was also drifting in declination. These episodes were fixed by doing the full ACE restart procedure. Except that the filter wheel GUI on the camera computer also stopped working during the fourth episode. This resulted in a loss of filter and other info. in the file headers. During the fifth instance, the filter wheel GUI went away and could not be coaxed into starting up again. I tried two full restarts for this one. I was able to get bring the telescope control up again and park the scope. During two of episodes the camera GUI froze. It displayed the following error message. "tr1::bad_weak_ptr." Even after the full ACE restart procedure the old instance of the ACE control system was still present. It would crash and go away only when I clicked buttons on the service selector. The, a new instance of the camera control could be started.

Todd Hillwig

Valparaiso University

None.

Andor CCD

2

7

Equipment Failure

Nearly complete waste of a beautiful night. Tracking turned off repeatedly. It took four complete restarts to finally get the telescope to keep tracking for more than 10 or 15 minutes. Observed for 2 hours and tracking turned off again, repeatedly. Three more complete restarts and I finally gave up. Tried several positions on the sky, with no success. Even when it was tracking it didn't track well. With the guiding on (which it didn't seem was very effective), the telescope drifted by several arc seconds every ten minutes or so. Also, the "Park" entry under "Presets" sends the telescope to the wrong position: it sends it to an RA of 0:00:00 NOT an HA of 0:00:00...and leaves the telescope tracking, which is obviously very bad. Oh, and the mirror covers never read closed, still read "closing."

Roi Alonso

IAC

Lisa Altinier

CCD

3

5

Wind

First half of night with high wind gusts. Second part ok, with already known problems. Tracking was difficult/impossible at end of night, too many RA resets needed. Not clear status of mirror petals, they seem to be open, but closing them takes forever and seems not to have an effect (opening again is almost immediate).

Tom Rutherford

ETSU

None

Andor CCD

8

0.5

No problems to report

M31, Kepler exoplanet. Had to do three restarts at around 2:30 UT but that is fairly typical behavior so no real issues to report-- an uneventful night.

Javier Licandro

Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

Hissa Medeiros

Andor camera (JKT)

6

2

Other

I began the observation night very well without problems. In the middle of the night, it was necessary to do the full restart because the slew shows me an error (unable to complete the slew due to an equipment error), I did a full restart again and it was fixed. The big problem was at the end (close to 03:00 UT), it was necessary to do the full restart two times, and it was impossible to continue the observation. I finished because the tracking did not work.

Todd Vaccaro

BSU

N/A

Andor CCD

5

3

Equipment Failure

Eclipsing binaries. Missed early flats due to telescope RA not reporting correctly to fits headers, which apparently is only occurring when tele is idle. Mirror cover was saying "closing" when I first logged on and continued to do so after I closed. I lost the majority of an eclipse egress due to tracking failures (over 5 times before I gave up on the target). It was failing ~+2 hrs HA at +78 deg. A full reset was needed to move the tele anywhere as it kept reporting an equipment error. After a full reset I could reacquire the target, but it would produce trailed stars after a few frames. When I went to another object that had yet to transit it started doing the same thing at HA 00:15:00. Something wrong on W side of mount?

Keefe Kamp

FIT

None

CCD

0

10

Other

Cyg X-1 and Be Star Observations Planned but was too dusty to open

Keefe Kamp

FIT

None

CCD

5

1

Equipment Failure

Cyg X-1 and Be star observations. Problems with petals. where it would continuously say closing but would not close. Also when telescope starting tracking it would change from open to opening but everything appear normal. Full restart fixed both issues

Núria Torres-Albà

Clemson University

Dieter Hartmann

SARA ORM

6.5

1

Software/Control PC Issues

Clemson University observations of high-z blazars. Problems: -Computer PC was unresponsive at the beginning of the night. Called Brian and he rebooted it. -Tracking stopped working (could see star traces on the image). Stopped tracking and attempted to restart it, but 'Slew Telescope' window showed an error (Unable to complete slew due to an equipment error). Restarted the system as usual (Full Restart). Problem persisted. -After restart 'Mirror Cover' window was stuck in 'Opening' for almost 5min. -Restarted once more. This time, no issue with mirror covers. Problem was only fixed for one single exposure (5min) and then returned. -Restarted a third time, and switched to a higher altitude source. Tracking worked afterwards.

Yong Sheng

Clemson University

None

RM griz

0

10

Wind

Clemson University blazar study. The wind speed is over or around the threshold.