ARCHIVE January2010
finding OAG guide stars
http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbarchive/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/1691614/page/413/view/collapsed/sb/9/o/all
General / Maintenance / Techniques
Zen Autoguiding
What is the sound of no relays clicking? I tried some unguided tracking tonight and captured the data so I could see what’s up with my mount. I had to find a […]
Focuser / Maintenance / Observing Reports
OAG installed
Tonight was cloudy, but the clouds were high and thin, transparent enough to see Orion, The Dogs, Moon, Mars, and that’s about it. So, I spent some time doing maintenance. I swapped […]
Clouds only at night
The sky has been somewhat tricky lately. I had clear skies a couple of nights ago, but used it to test the guiding (which seems not much improved by the worm block). […]
MaxIM scripting
This is a list of all the MaxIM scripting commands.
Cloudy again
It was cloudy all day yesterday and today. It’s OK, I needed the rest.
Deep Sky / Gear / General / Long Exposure Photography / Observing Reports
NGC2244, The Rosette Nebula in Monoceros
With the newly-tuned mount, I decided to try Pumpkin on some more unguided imaging. After the “baseline” from the previous night, I now wanted to see what this MFWB could really do. […]
Gear / General / Maintenance / Optics
Pumpkin's eyeglasses
I picked up a Field Flattener (which also happens to be a 0.8x focal reducer, which I didn’t necessarily need) for Pumpkin soon after getting the scope. The performance was a little […]
Gear / General / Maintenance
Worm OK, polar alignment needs work
With an hour of The Rosette in the can, I decided to switch to 20m subframes instead of 5m. I only got 2 frames before the mount hit its safety limit. I’m […]
ATM / General / Maintenance / Optics
Trixie post-collimation
I spent some time this afternoon tuning Trixie. The collimation job is a but tougher with the open-frame scope; each turnbuckle is a collimation adjustment point. It took a lot of tweaking […]
RECENT UPDATE
Polar Alignment Calculations
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 […]
Gear / Observatory / Telescope
Special Guest Star takes the mount at Hilltop O
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 […]
General / Maintenance / Observatory
Dome shutter is motorized again!
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 […]
Trixie 2017 – tube mods
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 […]
MOST COMMENTED
Observatory
Observatory 2.0 – Time has come today!
General / Maintenance
First Light, a deeper look
Mount / Observatory / Telescope
Observatory 2.0 – Result!
Observatory
Observatory 2.0 – The Pier goes in
Gear / General / Maintenance
Martin Farmer Wormblock installation notes
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
NGC2244, The Rosette Nebula
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
Another beautiful night.