Ad Astra Observatory

After only nine days of penance to the New Telescope Curse, the astronomy gods handed me a break tonight, clear skies and a 6-day moon.

Of course, by the time I was out in the observatory, the moon had set behind the house. Grumble.

Trixie needed three things to happen in order to get rolling. Jr came out to help; she booted up the mount and the dome, and helped me to work the punch list, until she fell asleep. 🙂

First, she needed to be collimated. Getting all the optics lined up is always a chore for me, but it’s especially involved when the scope in question has been completely disassembled. I squared the focuser, adjusted the secondary forward a bit to center it under the focuser. Then I pointed the secondary at the center of the primary, and used the laser to get the primary tilted back at the focuser. Everything is lined up.. but I sure do need a better center spot on the primary. Later.

Second, Trixie needed an eyepiece brought to focus. With her newly-collimated optics, I knew I could pick up some stars almost anywhere I pointed the scope, so I started racking the focuser, and.. clank. Is anyone surprised to hear that I ran out of backfocus? Sometimes I hate Newtonians. 😛 Luckily, I was close, and even more luckily, I had added a 3/4″ spacer below the focuser (clearance for the focus motor, remember?), so I pulled the spacer out, and was able to just barely get the 32mm to come to focus (close enough, at least). Later in the evening, I tried the 55mm Plossl, which had a *ton* more room in the backfocus department (w00t) and the 31mm TermiNagler, which sadly requires even more backfocus than the 32mm does (boo, hiss). The 55mm has a *big* FOV.

Finally, Trixie needed her finder to be aligned to the main optics. This needs a bright object to point the finder at, which you can then point the main scope at, and then adjust the finder to center it up. This process took a bit of time, as the moon had set (being the second brightest object in the sky makes it a favorite for this task), and the summer stars were too high in the sky to be helpful; the finder scope is straight-through, and mounted near the rear of the scope, so I have to lay on the ground to see through the finder, only then to notice that the eyepiece is 8′ off the ground… sigh. I was casting about in Pegasus and Perseus, looking for something bright and close to the horizon, when I noticed that The Pleiades had risen (praise the maker!). Once I got the scope in the general area, I had the scope and finder aligned within a few minutes. Object in finder, scroll around a bit with the scope, ok, found the object (M45 is so huge that I can barely fit the brightest core stars in the 32mm “finder” eyepiece), back to the finderscope, adjust adjust, ok, now confirm everything’s centered up, great!

Then a cool thing happened. I wanted to test my finder alignment, so I slewed in the direction of M31 (another one of the few objects I can star hop to), oops, have to move the dome a bit. When I moved the dome, I was about to continue slewing towards M31, when I realized I could see it in the finder. 😮 Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good.

Eyepiece was too high again, sigh.

Anyway, I confirmed with a bright star that was low enough to see, that the finder and scope are aligned.

I pointed back to M45 to see if Jr wanted to take a peek. She was too tired to deal with it, so I sent her inside, and before I shut down, I tried out Yet Another iPhone at the Eyepiece shot, just to see what I’d get, and was pleasantly surprised that one of the shots came out.

I also took a photo from outside the observatory.

So, the 2017 build is not fully rolling yet; from this test, it’s clear that the tubes need to be shortened a bit; I need to get the 3/4″ spacer back in, and the 31mm T5 didn’t even come to focus without it… maybe an inch and a half? And while I’m cutting tubes, I need to replace the steel UTA cage tubes with the aluminum tube I bought over the weekend. That’ll help the balance. And we haven’t even started on the camera rig and all those wires. There’s stuff.

But the scope came together, got lined up, and got some focused starlight into my eyeball tonight. For a first light, I call that a win.