Ad Astra Observatory

There are a lot of variables in astronomy in general, and in astrophotography in particular.

This must be aligned to that must be set like this… so that the rig will just more or less function, the startup sequence is still quite daunting, the Jr. Astronomer will tell you. So I spent a lot of time, awhile ago, to keep the number of things I have to deal with on a given evening, down to a bare minimum.

There are those who completely motorize all aspects of the telescope’s function, but I have never really wanted to get into a camera rotator. I like my photos “north-is-up”, thank you very much. But I wanted to see what the T3i and Cassie could do with a really nice moon photo… the framing is not to be believed. I haven’t processed the image yet, but I want to see this at full resolution. 18mpx, I covered nearly every pixel. In a word, 😮

I had to rotate 90º to get there. I did a mosaic last night, but I wanted the ease of processing a full-disk photo. This shouldn’t be a super drag, but I don’t practice a lot. The camera got aligned with North a long time ago, and why change it unless you have to?

Anyway, I rotated the camera by hand and framed it in the DSLR viewfinder. Why not? Tweak the focus (I hand-focused that Jupiter shot, as the tube shrunk during the run, I would focus using the camera’s live view, while it wasn’t capturing), Looks pretty good.

Now the tricky part, get it back to start. First, move to Vega. Oh, Vega, who I can also focus in the viewfinder, although live view on the LCD makes the Bahtinov mask work better… how I adore thee, ol’ V. Anyway, I rotate the camera back by hand, you sort of line it up with the scope. There’s an edge that lines up with the mounting plate, but it’s not the bottom of the camera.

Spot on. It platesolved out to 359º and change. Yes, there may come a day when I level it to within an inch of its life. But for now, I’ll call that good.

Giving the mount a thorough cleaning and adjustment seems like an excellent and a horrible idea. But I want to start dealing with some backlog items. I an worried that the squeaking RA gear means some awful uneven wear or something… But I know that it works, really well. I’ve put all the gear through its paces. There are repair punch lists all over the place.

It’s worth taking an afternoon to see if I can make that squeak go away, and maybe take a little more backlash out of Dec.

I need to calibrate the azimuth rotation, too. Might as well run those tests at the same time.