Ad Astra Observatory

Clear nights come about once a week right now. It was suckerholes until about 9pm and then clear until about midnight.

I spent some time collimating everything. First, I collimated Trixie, which is actually a joy; all thumbscrews, and the open truss makes it a cinch to see what you’re doing. Once I got Trixie all lined up, including a run on the autocollimator (I need to get some Catseye center markers — that’s next), I used the collimated optics to collimate my laser collimator (which is a worthless piece of junk and I should replace it with something more solid).

Then I moved on to Veronica. Veronica has her own set of problems surrounding collimation; but that’s another post.

I took Trixie out under the stars, tried to bring the DSLR (with MPCC attached) to focus… no dice. The focuser runs out of room just a touch before getting to focus.

I read my previous post, and I’d apparently gotten this working before, so (in the middle of the viewing session) I recollimated the scope with the bolts pushed way forward…

Still no dice.

So then I looked around, and figured out that the collimation bolts are 1/4-20 (of which I have a ton – yay!), countersunk (of which I have not so many – boo!). I think I have a date with Tacoma Screw. Although it also seems to me that I’ve played this game before, with awful results…

Oh well, we’ll see what happens. Trixie the Astrograph will not happen without the MPCC on the camera, so it’s either fix this with collimation bolts, or by shortening the focuser somehow (that’s a different type of drawtube, or replacing the focuser board, or cutting the truss tubes shorter). I’ll start with the collimation bolts.

It was a 15-day moon, very bright, washing out just about everything. Jupiter was low in the northeast, and was in the middle of a very pretty cluster (or possibly asterism) of stars between the Pleiades and Hyades. I tried taking some photos of Jupiter, but the sky was boiling pretty good over there, so nothing I feel like posting.

I was having some pointing problems, but given my general rustiness and lack of polar alignment refinement, I’m letting that go today.

I came in before the scope dewed up. It was pretty cold out — fingers were getting real cold by the end of the short session.

I’m getting back in the swing of things. I have an astronomy todo list again.