Ad Astra Observatory

A,

It’s 12:20. I just got in from a polar alignment session that lasted almost

3 hours. The mac helpfully sang out the time at the top of the hour to make
me jump 10 feet in the air while trying to center stars at 200x.

I started with a cold start, and set up about an 8 star pointing model: A:
8 E: -27
Found a star on the list near the meridian Ras Alhague (a Oph). Did Polar
Axis Correction. Star went way over there. Centered it by alt/az. shut down
mount. rebuilt pointing model. A: 30 E: -8 ouch.
back to Ras Alhague. PAC. center, shut down, restart, rebuild another

pointing model. A: 9 E: 5. Better, but geez.
Back to Ras A. PAC. This time, I’m close enough that Ras A is still in the
FOV. Center. shut down. Restart. Try to synch on Vega. Mount thinks Vega is
West now, but it’s not, so it hits the safety limit (which, since I have
those turned off, means I stopped it manually (the “Jimbo safety limit”)
before it ground my Dec cable into putty between the axes). Use Altair
instead. point. point. Point. POINT.

Let me take this moment to mention that I have a total of 5 objects with
reticles in them (Reticle EP in SCT, Camera in Pumpkin, Pumpkin’s 9×50,
SCT’s 6×26 straight-through correct image (nice), and Telrad). Exactly
*none* of the things are actually pointing close enough to where the others
point so that I can just center the thing in the crosshairs and then it’s
there at 200x. So each single solitary star is me doing contortions on the

floor trying to look through the finder to get it close and then
re-contorting to get to the eyepiece to hunt around for it — building the
pointing models takes some serious time. Like several minutes per star,
times about 10 stars, times I think I rebuilt 4 times tonight. That’s what
takes so long. Man, I was hating little colored dots and red crosshairs by
the time I was done.

Another aside: here’s how pointing model building goes for me.

first star: Altair -> synch, ok.
second star: tempted to use Albireo, but I’m not sure if it’s the orange
guy or the green one or in between, so scroll up to Vega or down to Deneb.
now I get A 36 E -40 or something stupid like that.
third star: whichever of Vega or Deneb was not #2 is #3. A 17 E -9 (it’s
closing in)

And then it stays there (A 17 E -9) no matter how many more stars I add,
until I meridian flip, at which point the first star is a little worse (A
30 E 8); I usually use Arcturus as the first in the west.
Note: Antares spends the night behind the roof of the shed, so it’s not
worth chasing unless you’re photographing.
So then after Arcturus I was doing Unkalkhai (a Ser) because I knew it was
over there somewhere. Now it goes back to A 17 E -9 again. And stays there
through a couple more alignments.

Then I do Dubhe, and wham all of a sudden the numbers drop to like A 6 E -5
or something, and right about there is when I know that I’ve got the right
numbers for the actual polar alignment.
…

I think that it needs stars east, stars west, and also some stars up in the
north so it can like triangulate better or something.
By the way, Mizar works as an alignment star, it’s the slightly brighter of
the 2 white stars. Stupid Albireo.

Anyway, pointpointpoint, and…

A: -1 E: 0.

That’s all, folks. You’ve been a great audience. Tip your waitresses.
Goodnight.

J
PS: Haven’t actually tried any real GOTOs yet and more importantly haven’t

tried any photography. But you gotta admit those are pretty flashy numbers.