Ad Astra Observatory

As with any new piece of gear, the NJP is going to take a little work to get it up and running in the observatory.

I knew that I was going to need to mate it to the pier topper. I had envisioned putting threaded holes in the pier topper, but decided to through-bolt the mount instead. It made the drilling easier, and will be just as secure, I think. If I decide to thread the holes later, I can always use the bottom plate for that. Anyway, that part’s done.

The mount came without two essential cables; the RS232C cable is the only way to drive the Temma GOTO system, so that topped the priority list. The autoguider cable is going to be required before I can do any real imaging, but I can live without it briefly.

I found an autoguider cable on sale at Shoestring Astronomy for $18. Needless to say, it’s on order, and will be welcomed when it shows up.

The serial cable was a little trickier; the port on the mount is a 4-pin DIN cable. It turns out to be a perfect match for S-Video cables. I had an extra S-Video cable lying around, so that worked. But mating to the DB-9 serial port on the PC was going to be complicated unless I could figure out the pinout. Luckily, the online Tak family really welcomes new members. I posted a Wanted ad on Astromart saying I was looking for the pinout or a working cable, and I had a pinout in my email box 30min later. Amazing. A quick trip to Fry’s and I had the parts I needed. I put together the S-Video-to-RJ11-to-DB9 cable in about 20 minutes. Works like a charm. The mount makes a strange (to me) noise when the computer is driving it. I need to see if I made an error in cable construction.

Next up is figuring out how to mount telescopes to the NJP. The NJP did not come with a dovetail saddle; it came with a bolt-on “Large Mounting Plate” that will be problematic to mount DUPs to natively. I will do some more tinkering tonight to see if I can get DA’s to mount to the plate, but it seems likely that I will end up buying a dovetail saddle, from Losmandy, Astro-Physics, or Casady. I can also buy a NJP saddle from either BT or Casady, but I think that the Casady “make it flat” adapter is the best long-term idea. In theory I will be more flexible in saddle placement down the road. Although, honestly, I doubt I will ever move the saddle once it’s on. I might surprise myself, though. (:

I still need to get to the hardware store to pick up the through-bolts for the pier.

I think that once I have bolts, an autoguider cable, and a saddle, I’ll be up and running.

New gear integration. (: It’s “the fun part”.