Ad Astra Observatory

I saw an Iridium flare tonight. I checked Heavens-above, and it turns out that Iridium 10 flared over Hilltop at 7:40pm in the SE, which is right where I saw the bright flash, right after the kids went in to get ready for bed. Oh well. Next time.

I wanted to get a photo of the weird star shapes I’d been seeing while focusing Trixie, but the kids wanted a chance to see through the scope first, so I spent some time pointing at Jupiter and M42 and letting them climb the ladder and peek.

After everyone went inside, I started setting up for my photo. I barely got everything put together and… clouds rolled in. So I spent a little time shooting what I could anyway, getting close to focus on Sirius before moving the scope over towards Aldebaran (lots of star clusters around there) to try my luck. I did get one image saved and emailed off — the stars had some kind of “lobe” off to one side. Hm.

The clouds came in pretty good at this point, and I was a little worn out from the previous night’s run, so I decided to see if I could find the artificial star and do a mini star test. I found it right away, put it on a fencepost, and was able to get the telescope to focus on it. I need to re-run the star test, because there was a myriad of possible weirdnesses in the optical path (lots of extension tubes etc), but the “stars” looked oblong instead of round. This is more or less consistent with what the camera was seeing.

If I set up Trixie on a table in the shop, I should be able to star test even during the day or on a cloudy night. I might be able to get some photos of the star test images that way, too.

I suspect that the mirror clips and &c are not quite right on the primary. But we shall see.

It was fun having the kids out at the scope. I think everyone is getting pretty excited for spring.