Ad Astra Observatory

I can’t believe it. You would not believe how hard it was raining today. There was standing water on some of the stuff inside the observatory where it blew in the roller holes (nothing got damaged — thank you, plastic containers!).

At sunset, it was still raining on and off.

So after a day of telescope maintenance, I decided to try to collimate the C9.25, too; why not? When the kids headed off to bed, I started to get set up, went outside to grab the OTA, and…

a whole-sky suckerhole opened up.

I mean, seriously, like gorgeous and glittery and clear, horizon to horizon.

So, not taking all this too seriously, I went out, dismounted Veronica/Pumpkin, mounted up Trixie, had to install the focuser and finder, and set about lining up the finder and main scope.

This, by the way, is a real pain. I mean, generally speaking, this is something that just takes a serious amount of time, unless the moon is up (5 day moon today, behind the tree, no dice). So I swept around with the main scope until I stumbled across M42 (that took a long time), and tried to get the finder lined up. It just… wouldn’t… go. Like the bracket I had it attached to wasn’t quite square or something.

But I figured out how to get it close enough (”if I hold the finder bracket as hard as I can in this particular direction, then it will be the same as the main scope, kinda”) to test whether I still had a flexure problem. Things looked… promising, so since the sky was holding up, I decided to mount the finder “for real”.

I’m pretty proud of my ingenious solution to the problem, pictured here:

I mounted the finder dovetail bracket onto a Losmandy DA (found some teeny screws that would work, and the holes lined up and everything, it was precious), and re-mounted Trixie’s top rail to hold the DA.

Then I went back to work lining up the finder again, and wouldn’t you know it lined up right away this time! w00t.

So, M42 (high in the southwest), in the finder, in the main scope — check.

Slew over to Mars (did I mention I’m doing all this without the mount turned on? Don’t get me started), Mars (high in the east) in the finder scope, also in the main scope — check. Not centered, but we’ll get to that later.

Slew over to Dubhe (low in the north), in the finder, in the main scope — check. Even more not centered, but still, at this point, I’m getting pretty excited, but one more test…

Slew over to Caph (low in the west), in the finder, in the main scope — check! OK, way not centered, but still within the FOV of the main scope.

Just for funsies, slew to M45 (The Pleiades), in the finder, in the main scope… check. Gorgeous at 1500mm. The eyepiece awash in stars, I can almost fit the naked-eye asterism into the 32mm eyepiece. More stars than I felt like counting.

And there was much rejoicing and the eating of fruit bat and orangutan.

So the whole “not centered” thing. At this point, I am going to rack it up to some tweaking that needs to happen with all the turnbuckles, etc. The top DUP plate didn’t seat properly and I didn’t take the time to fix it. It’s close, but I need to loosen all the turnbuckles, then get the plate installed, then re-tighten the turnbuckles, then collimate. Then I will start worrying about “it’s centered over here but not over here”.

The finder and main scope can now be aligned close enough that I got every target I looked for. I’m willing to believe that some more tuning will produce a nice, stiff, repeatable collimation that I will enjoy for years to come.

…

Now let’s talk about the weather.

What. In. The. Name. Of. Plato?!

Who ever heard of “worked all day on the scope in the rain”, followed by “then it cleared up at night when I needed to test”?!

Whoever is responsible, I thank you. Maybe the astronomy gods just figured I’d paid my dues on Trixie, and if I didn’t get to test my fixes, I may never get back to it. (: Whatever the reason, I’m really, really glad I got to test tonight.

Because Trixie is on the verge of moving from the “ATM” category into the “Gear” category, and that will be really, really cool.

Sky’s still clear, but I am wiped out after a day of wrestling that scope, and I am worried that I’ll break something by getting too excited when the scope still needs tweaking and some safety checks.

I leave you, my audience, with this, a photo of Trixie “in situ”, in a position that “just barely clears the roof”.

Good night, Trixie.