Ad Astra Observatory

I needed one more calculation, before I can put Trixie all back together again. The new upper cage has changed the length of the upper truss poles, so they need to be cut, and (cue dramatic music) new truss clamps need to be made (oh, the humanity).

Getting this measurement was a two-person task. B and I manually aligned the main mirror (in the LTA cage) and the focuser (in the new-and-improved UTA cage), bringing the telescope to focus on a tree line a couple miles away. This involved careful teamwork (“move it a bit higher, no the other direction, yep, that’s it, hold it there…”), someone had to have a hand on each cage at all times, the primary mirror was making a dive off the table at one point… :O

We got it all figured out, and both of us got to see the tree line, it was cool to see it working!

New distance between LTA and UTA is 27″, poles need to be cut to 29″, and new pole seats cut to 22º.

I am *not* as up to speed at woodworking as I was when I was cutting pole seats the first time. I only sort of remember how I did it, so I went back to read the trusty blog, because I remember writing all about it last time:

“I set up the drill press to do pole seats”. Oh, thank you very much, for this insight.

I later say something to the effect of “man, I think I cut enough pole seats to make 3 scopes by now”… a little more detail on the process could be helpful.

I’m ducking the question here, again. I’ll treat it elsewhere. From Trixie’s perspective, I’m having trouble getting set up to cut pole seats.

I’ll get them cut out. Trixie’s getting pretty close. Again.

It was a lot of fun working the optics with B. It was a good day of astronomy.