Manuals for telescopes and instruments.
General Information for all Observers Observer contract, weather closure rules, computing resources, IRAF setup for new users, Cosmo (telescope pointing), ICE, airmass, filters, CCD characteristics, weather system, lamp emission spectra.
2.7m Telescope Messages, Cautions, Observing Limits, Telescope Control System (TCS), Tull Spectrograph, Virus-P, IGI, WHT Guider.
2.1m Telescope Cold start procedure, Cautions, Troubleshooting, Safety and Efficiency, Track82, Guide82 & Focus82, Sandiford Echelle Spectrograph, Argos User Manual, CQUEAN link, ES2, IGI, WHT Guider.
0.9m Telescope Messages, Cautions, Quickstart, Operating Procedures, PC-TS User's manual.
0.8m Telescope Messages, Cautions, 30" / 0.8M Rice University - University of Texas Robotic Telescope, PFC Guide, PFC Manuals. The Boller & Chivens telescope has been retired, and the M1 mirror, as well as the PFC have been re-purposed in the new telescope system. As new information arrives about the OMI telescope and mount, old documents will be archived.
MONET ETEL, TCS, HOPF GPS, Hydraulics, Theis weather station, TO Manual, Dome, WIKI link.
ROTSE3B (rotse3b) Information on the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) 3B (rotse3b) Telescope system at McDonald Observatory
Old manual page The old manual page and its documents are still available, but are no longer maintained. If you can't find a manual in this new site, please contact John or Darrin.
Unihedron SQM-L / SQM-LE Sky Quality Measurement Reference
Observing Support - Technical References Low-level, technical documentation of relevance to Observing Support staff (not generally relevant to observers or equipment users)