We encountered an intermittent problem with the dome. During exposure # 659967 (at 04:03ut at position [ra,dec]=[314.88,-4.86]), the dome began to oscillate. On the AXIS web cam, the dome slit moved back and forth at least 3 times before settling down: it would first rotate to where the larger circle on the axis camera display (the beam at the dome slit) was close to one slit edge, and then it would move so that the circle was near the opposite edge of the dome slit, and then back again. It eventually stopped doing this half-way through the exposure. I don't think any of the exposure was affected by this, since the inner and outer circles were both clear of the slit edges at all times. This occurred again at 4:09ut during exposure # 659971. In both cases, the dome never occulted the beam, so the data were unaffected.
| Total Times | Time Observed | Time Engineering | Time lost technical | Time lost weather | Time lost other | Total Program Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-07-18 | 11.25 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 11.25 |
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We love the photometric nights! We would like to also request better seeing :)
Mirror temp was 2C lower than ambient all night long. The wind steadily picked up speed through the night (~8mph at the start of the night, rising steadily to 25mph by UT 07:00, and to ~35mph by the end of the night). We were pointed into the wind (it was out of the NE) for much of the night, and this caused images to be elongated along the PA~45 direction.