Troubleshooting
Camera problems
If the camera image is completely white or red, it is overexposed. Try reducing the exposure time. If the camera image is completely black or green, it is underexposed. Increase the exposure time.
If a camera image “hangs”, meaning the picture does not change anymore, not even the readout noise, try restarting the corresponding camera. From jeff, you can send the restart command this way:
ssh root@computername invoke-rc.d dot-ccd restart
Replace computername with scott, virgil, etcetera, corresponding to which camera has hanged.
If nothing happened after 30 seconds, try the same command again.
More information is on the cameras page.
PD Focus problems
Try to restart the PDFocus camera daemon on penelope, see above.
If it doesn’t work, stop the PD Focus program, exit IDL, and restart IDL and pd_focus.
Guider problems
If there is no image of the solar disk and/or no red rectangle showing the current position, try restarting the FullDisk camera daemon on beaker, see above. Note that the “Sun gone” alarm will go off when you restart the camera daemon, this is normal, just click on “Acknowledge”. The alarm window should turn green and show “Sun found” when the camera daemon is running again.
If there is an image and a red rectangle, but the guider is not responding, check that:
- You have selected a target. There should be a purple circle. If not, right-click on the disk and select “Go to this position”.
- The guider is set to “TRACK”.
- The exposure time of the Full Disk camera is correct (gaussian curve is near the center of the histogram).
If the telescope is slowly drifting away, try the following steps, while observing the LEDs of the telescope control switch box on the left of the desk:
- Press “STOP”, wait a second, press “TRACK”.
- If this does not have effect, repeat this another two times.
- Try the “DARK”, “FLAT”, “CENTER” modes.
- If this does not have effect, go back to “TRACK” mode.
- Right click on positions above, below, left and right of the red rectangle and select “Go to this position”.
- If this still does not have any effect, stop the guider program and restart it, and select “CENTER”.
- Repeat the last step a few times if it doesn’t work.
If the above steps do not have any effect, or if the Sun has drifted completely out of the Full Disk camera, turn the switch to “Stop”, then to “Tower”, and call Rob immediately.
Sun alarm doesn’t stop
If the “sun gone” alarm does not stop after clicking on the “Ackowledge” button,
kill and restart the sunalarm program that is running on jeff:
skill sunalarm
sunalarm &