Ad Astra Observatory

I’ve just taken Trixie out for another shakedown run, this time with the full imaging rig attached; that’s the guidescope, 2 finders, and the camera, which adds about 10# to the total weight.

If you look closely at the photos I’ve posted already, you’ll see that there’s no place to attach a guidescope on Trixie yet — I still needed to attach the second mount plate, and also I needed to make a bracket to hold a finderscope. I left these until after I got back from Hamburg, and on Saturday, I finally picked up the wood necessary to install the guidescope and finder onto Trixie. Made all the cuts, got the holes drilled, installed the plates. Everything went together pretty easily.

Got the scope mounted up again, popped on the guidescope, got the mount balanced in RA — needs a boatload of counterweight with the guidescope and camera attached! 42# I think. But the mount moves like a dream. Without the motors running anyway. That’s for next phase.

Started to balance the scope in Dec, heard a godawful cracking sound — one of the mount plate screws was ripping its way out of the wood! Yikes! Nearly lost the whole scope. Glad that happened during daylight or I’d have lost it for sure. Dismounted the scope, laid it carefully on the floor of the observatory, decided to come back in the morning.

So Sunday morning, I went back out there, scratched my head a little, and decided that I’d use a 3-phase plan to fix the problem.
1) I added washers to the screws, so that it’s more of a “compression” thing and less of a “pulling” thing.

2) I added an additional screw (total of 3), to spread the load over more area, and
3) I (plan to) glue the cleat onto the ring with Gorilla Glue (I’ll do this tomorrow).

All of that went together without a hitch. It’s holding a lot better, even without the glue. It’s getting glued anyway, though. Makes me feel more secure. Glue-n-screw. Solid.

So tonight, after I finished the repair, I popped it back on the mount. Got the guidescope (really just a sliding counterweight at the moment) installed, got everything all balanced. Feels really dreamy pushing that big monster around on the mount. It just floats there.

I decided to do just a short session — get the balance all worked out, align the finder, and make sure that everything was going to work without something ripping out or falling off or something. Also, I need to figure out how to maneuver around that big thing inside the shed. There are a few places in the northwest corner where I’m going to have to keep an eye on it or it’s going to hit the wall… But tonight, I didn’t even power up the mount. Just me, the scope, and pushing it around by hand.

Anyway, I looked at Jupiter a little, only through the camera viewfinder. Looks pretty enough. Checked out a couple of stars, just to make sure that I could bring things to focus. Then I popped over to The Andromeda Galaxy (M31), to make sure that my finder alignment was all good.

The good is, M31 looked pretty nice. I mean, I’m not dark adapted at all, needed a restroom, lights on in the house (M31 is over the house), standing on tiptoe to see into the eyepiece. But M31 and M110 ( a companion galaxy that’s ~1deg from M31) are in the same FOV, and M31 is nice and bright. I don’t know how big a scope one needs to see the dust lanes. But M31 is definitely a crowd pleaser.

The bad part is, I don’t know that the finder and the scope turned out to be aligned. And what I mean by that is, I may have a serious flexure problem. More testing is required, on a night where I’m not pumped full of adrenalin, expecting to have to throw my body in between the scope and the floor at any moment. But I’m pretty sure that the finder was eh, centered pointing to one part of the sky (I tested out on several stars and also Jupiter, and in all those positions, finder and scope were on enough that object was in FOV of camera (something around 1deg). But M31 took a little hunting. It’s entirely possible that I’m worrying about nothing. But the scope creaks a little as it’s moving, and I don’t have any reason to believe that I made it stiff enough. So, more testing. I have some fixes I can add if it needs more stiffness. I just hope it doesn’t come to that.

Anyway, in all, a successful test. No pictures “of” or “through” yet — it’s dark out, and I wasn’t running the G-11. Soon.

Oh, I feel like I’m driving an anti-aircraft gun as I’m looking through the finder. It’s mounted on the back ring, next to the primary mirror, so I have to get “behind” the scope and shove it around as I’m looking through crosshairs. I need some padded shoulder rests. (: