Category: General
ATM / General / Maintenance / Optics
Trixie post-collimation
I spent some time this afternoon tuning Trixie. The collimation job is a but tougher with the open-frame scope; each turnbuckle is a collimation adjustment point. It took a lot of tweaking […]
Gear / General / Maintenance
Martin Farmer Wormblock installation notes
The new MFWB showed up yesterday, and I knew that I needed some time to work on it, so I did the installation during the day today. Here are some notes about […]
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 […]
And the rains returned
After the brief clearing between fronts Wednesday night, the rain started up again. El Nino is some serious stuff, I guess.
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 […]
Weather trends
Here’s what I was doing in January 2005 Jan ‘06 I was taking time off of astronomy and grinding a mirror. But here’s January ‘07 …and January ‘08 …*and* January ‘09 So […]
It's not fit for man nor beast out there
It is raining so hard that it sounds like a roaring crowd. I have parts and a plan to work on Trixie a little today, but I figured I’d wait for it […]
OK, seriously, rain is alright with me, but
…the driving in the rain around here sucks. It’s going like cats and dogs out there, mudslides on Niles Canyon, etc. I’ve also noticed a strange thing about Newark — when the […]
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.