TAG Collimation
ATM / Gear / Maintenance / Techniques / Telescope
Trixie 2017 – First Light
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 […]
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
Trixie the Astrograph – at last!
Well, the result looks a lot like a first light image — just a couple of short subframes of a well-worn deep-sky object. But these feeble pixels took a bit of work […]
Focuser / Gear / Maintenance / Mount
Another layer of the onion
I spent some time in the fasteners aisle at McLendon’s Hardware on Saturday morning, looking for longer collimation bolts for Trixie. The mirror cell has nice, easy-to-source hardware (1/4-20 countersunk for the […]
ATM / Gear / Techniques / Telescope
Veronica – collimation problems
Veronica has never quite recovered from the Frankenstein act I pulled on her when I was trying to get the RCC working, and she has one remaining thorn in her side, a […]
Trixie trials
Clear nights come about once a week right now. It was suckerholes until about 9pm and then clear until about midnight. I spent some time collimating everything. First, I collimated Trixie, which […]
Trixie takes a test drive
It was a gorgeous sunny day today in Seattle (very strange for mid February), and the clear skies held up until nearly 11pm. Kismet or dumb luck, I knew that this was […]
Astro knowledge / ATM / Gear / General / Maintenance / Telescope
Trixie gets the laser test
My astro-Jedi friend Art came over to kick Trixie’s tires a little. He brought a laser, did a rough collimation, and then hung some weight off the focuser (in the form of […]
Deep Sky / General / Long Exposure Photography / Maintenance / Observatory / Observing Reports
Five hours of Guided images
…with zero dropped subframes. I spent a little time refining the polar alignment last night. I am still getting some drift while running unguided; I calculated it to be about 6′ from […]
General / Maintenance / Techniques
Trixie in collimation
Ah, maintenance. Things you do on sunny days and cloudy nights. I spent some time getting Trixie in collimation today. It came together pretty well with the Catseye. It’s clear that the […]
General / Maintenance / Techniques
Bob’s Knobs
I spent a long time collimating Veronica the other day, with the new autocollimator I bought. That experience convinced me to buy Bob’s Knobs for Veronica and Cassie. I knew I would […]
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.