Observing campaign 19 starts out with major technical difficulties. The computer that controls the CCD guider appears to have died. A replacement will be ready by tomorrow. In the meantime, the instrument was reconfigured for imaging polarimetry. Unfortunately, almost all early evening objects were missed because of the troubleshooting required to determine the demise of the guider. All observations were unguided during the night and target acquisition was slowed as the science CCD needed to be used for acquisition and the imaging field is only 50"x50". The pointing and open-loop tracking of the Kuiper telescope is good enough to allow observations of several blazars during the second half of the night.
The sky was wonderfully clear and conditions surprisingly dry for July in Arizona. The forecast has the monsoon coming back into the picture in a couple of days. Hopefully, the guider can be fixed in time to get some spectropolarimetry done before thunderstorms show up to further disrupt the program.
