Ad Astra Observatory

I’m in WA for 2 weeks in what should be a fairly dark sky area. It’s been a bit cloudy, so last night was the first night I was able to even get things set up and polar aligned, etc.

I’m still a bit rusty getting things together while I’m on the road, but after my test run at Clear Lake, CA a couple of weeks ago, things went much more smoothly this time.

In particular, the battery behaved to spec. Not a problem slewing the scope around and driving the ST-4 at the same time.

I got barely enough time between the clouds to get set up, get a decent polar alignment, and shoot a very small pointing model.

I also tried out the new RCC, a coma corrector for Veronica that’s much like the MPCC I already have, but is designed with an extra 36mm of backfocus, which means that I should be able to drop the off-axis guider in between camera and corrector. Nice!

So, I tried it out, and, like every new piece of equipment, it will take a little elbow grease to get it working right.

The RCC has a larger backfocus requirement than the MPCC did, so I am going to have to re-collimate Veronica to accomodate, pushing the focal plane up the tube a little further. Once I get everything to come to focus, I will need to ensure that the main camera and the autoguider are both in focus, as well. That will have to get done on the next clear night (or I can try to play some games with focusing during the day at something that is really far away).

Also, I need to take the wobble out of the OAG, and adjust the T-ring so that the OAG has room to maneuver (you need to be able to rotate the OAG in order to find a star bright enough to guide on).

If all goes well, this will obviate the need for a guidescope, a prospect that I relish.

rain, rain, go away. please come back once I go home.