Ad Astra Observatory

Oh, it’s starting to get fun, now. The dome is ludicrous, but it works. I set up SGPro for a series of 20m subframes. All guided and focused and stuff.

The next step is, plate-solve the solution after each slew, verifying photographically that you’re where you’ve sent the mount, you take a picture and ask “where’s this?”, and the platesolver checks the pattern of stars, and says “you are here.” Then, ok, please center the scope where I asked, then. “Let me adjust that so it’s centered” then take another picture and “where’s this?”… lather, rinse, I found that I needed to repeat the routine twice, at times, yeah, ok, you got it on the green, putt for birdie…

So, in order to be able to tell the mount “Slew to target” and “Center on target”, you need a plate, solved to its position on the sky, as the reference coordinates for target. The “plate” used to be an actual photographic plate, take the picture, pull the plate out, develop the photo, then find all the stars and…

You take a photo, send it to the plate solving routine, and it comes back with RA/Dec coordinates.

Plate solving always seemed like deep magic to me. It still does, really. Graph theory to the max. Rock on, not my bag. Anyway, if your mount won’t take small enough Nudges to center accurately, or your rig is floppy and you’re way off from where the mount is pointing (with 04026, The Mount is Always Right. We like this. Thank you NJP!)… then plate solving is Not Going to Work for You, Today.

But taking great images is pretty easy with this Rig. Wide Open Spaces (you have to make the sound effects), Room to make a Big Mistake. — The Dixie Chicks (you have to cite your sources). I turned plate solving on, and things suddenly.. just worked. It was 😮

— old standard song

Things are just working. I just need to take the time to configure them. Time to move in.

Artwork at 11. Or maybe tomorrow.