Ad Astra Observatory

There were high, thin clouds all night. Only the brightest stars were shining through.

So I decided to spend the evening preparing for better nights.

I mounted the DAs on Veronica, so that Veronica now has a “saddle plate” on top, for Pumpkin’s new rail to ride in. I installed Pumpkin in guide scope position, and roughly balanced in RA with a second counterweight.

I spent the rest of the evening clearing off disk space on the astro laptop. Now that I have a primary laptop (the little mac netbook), I cleaned off all of the games and music and other stuff that isn’t needed on a second-tier box, and created 15gb of new disk space for putting astro pics into. Nifty. There’s still a bit more cleaning that needs to be done (email and contacts), but I have plenty of space (5 DVDs worth) to cram RAW frames for now.

I still need to get the ST-4 hooked back up, and I also need to get all the cables run cleanly again. But I am mostly all hooked up again, and ready to do the polar alignment/collimation/focus routine so I’m ready to get the job done.

I love it when a plan comes together.