Gear / Observatory

Pumpkin gets assimilated into the Rig

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This is the latest iteration of the imaging rig. Now that there’s a second digital camera in the house, this photo actually shows the D70 in situ for the first time. The […]

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Gear

Pumpkin — awww, cute.

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This is Pumpkin, the Astro-Tech 66mm ED refractor, on the first day with guidescope rings. For reasons passing understanding, this particular set of Losmandy guidescope rings is matte silver instead of black […]

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Solar System Photography

Moon at 6 days

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First light with Pumpkin. I hardly really count this as a first light — the sun was still up and the scope was on a photo tripod. But, there you go. The […]

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Uncategorized

RE: AT66 – stuck locking collar?

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This is going to sound nuts, but try rotating the focuser in a clock wise motion. Sometimes the focuser, if spun enough, can permanently unlock itself since it threads itself to the […]

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ATM

RE: DSC circuit – USB conversion?

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Hi Jimbo – Nice thorough debugging job. Hard to conclude anything other than the encoder is bad. I’d forgotten that I left the Test menu in my application. That was something I […]

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ATM

Re: DSCH – encoder resolution and pinout

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Hello Jimbo On Sep 24, 2007, at 9:23 AM, Jimbo S. Harris wrote: > Hi Scott, > > When I bought my G-11 mount secondhand, it already had DSCH encoders > installed. […]

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Techniques

Polar Alignment Calculations

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Here’s a page that derives Polar Alignment Calculations. (update 5/2020: the original site is gone, so I found the text on Wayback and am inserting it below. This is by the original […]

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Gear / Observatory / Telescope

Special Guest Star takes the mount at Hilltop O

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The Astro Jedi needed somewhere to store his light sab—- I mean, bucket, and I was only too happy to accommodate him. I have decided that I need to come to a […]

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General / Maintenance / Observatory

Dome shutter is motorized again!

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I finally decided to bite the bullet and fix the shutter motor. Things went sideways last winter, and I’ve been opening the shutter manually (and tying it shut with rope, so we […]

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ATM

Trixie 2017 – tube mods

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I finally got around to cutting the MTA-UTA tubes to length; the only eyepiece that would come to focus with the focuser spacer in place is the Televue 55mm Plossl. If I […]

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