Ad Astra Observatory

The rig is flying tonight. First target went behind the house, chasing the second across at a speedy clip — I have been learning how often, and how much, to adjust the dome.

I lost a couple of subframes to dome under-rotation (heh), and now I think I have the cadence down.

The dome sticks, every time, under a foot from the home position. I think there’s a detent or something odd; further investigation is required; dome might need shimming. We are still learning to work together.

I did have to do a full reset at one point, moving the dome back to home, opening the shutter wider, then slewing back to the target. I was trying to keep a cover at zenith, to protect the rig from the elements. That didn’t work, for the Dec I was shooting. So, the roof’s wide open now, with all the cooling of the whatsit that entails.

The setup is as minimal as we get, these days. Cartes du Ceil for mount control, PHD Guide 2 for autoguiding, and MaxIM DL for image capture. The new drives for the mount are still settling into the workflow. But, once the mount had GOTO, everything else pretty well fell into place.

Pumpkin allows for lots of room for error, while we tweak the knobs and get the guiding working right. Even with the new 18mpx CCD, Pumpkin is an easily-managed 2.7″/px. Bring on the Jet Stream.

We finally got the mount to the point where it would stay between +/-1.5″/px, and called it good.

Focus is a little rough, stars are a little blobby. But it’s cold and windy, too! The astronomy gods are toying with me.

And we sail on, 04026 and Pumpkin and me.