Ad Astra Observatory

I’m having a tracking problem with the mount. This is all eerily familiar. Things run fine for a couple of hours and then the wheels fall off.

This results in only being able to use a fraction of the frames that I shoot in a given session. Very irritating.

I adjusted the counterweights last night, making the mount slightly heavy to the east, rather than being in perfect balance. I am told that this keeps the RA gears meshed, which helps the tracking. Perhaps I didn’t find the sweet spot of east-heaviness. Perhaps the whole concept is hooey. All I know is, I again lost 2/3 of my frames; what follows is a stack of frames 3,4,5, and 7 out of 16.

I adjusted the CW back to near balance when I shut things down.

On a slightly positive note, the mount hit its safety limit and stopped tracking before touching the pier this morning. This is a function of where the object is in the sky, but joy anyway.

Last month’s shot through Pumpkin shows, as usual, much more context around the target.

NGC 6888, The Crescent Nebula in Cygnus

Another nice Ha image, another night where I’m a little disappointed in the mount’s performance. I may have to tweak the balance a little more.