Category: Maintenance
Deep Sky / Gear / General / Long Exposure Photography / Maintenance / Observing Reports
Pumpkin by her lonesome
I mounted up Pumpkin by herself tonight. The mount’s been having a problem with guiding, very rough behavior in RA. I’m going to be tuning the mount up tomorrow, but the sky […]
General / Maintenance / Observing Reports
Another respite between stormfronts
The skies cleared again tonight! Second time in a week, with about 2 weeks of continual rain going on around them. Interesting. The moon is one day before 1st quarter, so I […]
Gear / General / Maintenance
It's here! It's here!
My new Martin Farmer Worm Block finally showed up tonight. It’s been in-transit from the UK for a week. I’ve had nothing but good reports about this monolithic worm block from the […]
ATM / General / Maintenance / Observing Reports
The Astronomy Gods cut me a break
I can’t believe it. You would not believe how hard it was raining today. There was standing water on some of the stuff inside the observatory where it blew in the roller […]
General / Maintenance / Observing Reports
suckerholes
There was a brief moment between the stormfronts tonight, where I got to see a few stars and the really pretty crescent moon. Then the clouds closed back in. It’s been raining […]
General / Maintenance / Observing Reports
Cloudy, cloudy, and cloudy.
I haven’t seen any stars in several days now. The new moon brought in the cloud cover, and it’s hung around. During the day, the marine layer burns off, but as soon […]
Astro knowledge / General / Maintenance / Optics
Guiding — um, oops?
After speaking with Art tonight about my guiding workflow, it seems that I have been doing things… in a manner which would probably give me problems if I tried to do longish […]
Astro shopping list
As always happens when I’ve been out of astronomy for awhile and then get back in, I immediately realize that there are several “small upgrades” that I could make to push my […]
Maintenance / Observing Reports
Cloudy.
No testing tonight. I will go back and read the entries from last spring again. I think I have a bad mount.
RAW frame
Here is a RAW frame from last night. Since it’s an Ha image, there is not much useful data in the blue and green channels, but there you go. The original .FIT […]
RECENT UPDATE
Polar Alignment Calculations
Here’s a page that derives Polar Alignment Calculations. (update 5/2020: the original site is gone, so I found the text on Wayback and am inserting it below. This is by the original […]
Gear / Observatory / Telescope
Special Guest Star takes the mount at Hilltop O
The Astro Jedi needed somewhere to store his light sab—- I mean, bucket, and I was only too happy to accommodate him. I have decided that I need to come to a […]
General / Maintenance / Observatory
Dome shutter is motorized again!
I finally decided to bite the bullet and fix the shutter motor. Things went sideways last winter, and I’ve been opening the shutter manually (and tying it shut with rope, so we […]
Trixie 2017 – tube mods
I finally got around to cutting the MTA-UTA tubes to length; the only eyepiece that would come to focus with the focuser spacer in place is the Televue 55mm Plossl. If I […]
MOST COMMENTED
Observatory
Observatory 2.0 – Time has come today!
General / Maintenance
First Light, a deeper look
Mount / Observatory / Telescope
Observatory 2.0 – Result!
Observatory
Observatory 2.0 – The Pier goes in
Gear / General / Maintenance
Martin Farmer Wormblock installation notes
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
NGC2244, The Rosette Nebula
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
Another beautiful night.