Maintenance

G-11 maintenance – getting serious about worm adjustment

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I have a new brass worm gear on the way. I hope that it will make my life better. In anticipation of its arrival, I decided to do some work on the […]

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Maintenance

load and balance

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I pulled the RA worm, cleaned and regreased it, and reinstalled it with an ammeter hooked up so I could see what the load looks like. In theory, if all is perfect, […]

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Maintenance

G-11 Gemini – worms, worms, worms

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I’ve never been entirely satisfied with the tracking performance of my G-11 Gemini. The “old” G-11 that I had worked flawlessly, which I now attribute to: – luck, – tuning by a […]

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Electronics / Maintenance

G-11 maintenance – Amperage and worm adjustment

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I spent the better part of the weekend trying to get an amperage reading off of the mount. According to a knowledgeable fellow G-11 owner, if the RA worm is properly adjusted, […]

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Focuser / Maintenance

A Very Tough Night

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This was one of Those Nights. Everything went wrong. It started with killing power supplies. I am trying to get a reading of the amperage coming out of the mount, which will […]

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Maintenance

G-11 Worm adjustment

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http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Losmandy_users/message/12937 The “win” is clamping the worm blocks in-line, so that they can be adjusted as a unit without hassle.

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Maintenance

G-11 Periodic Error analysis

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I saved off one of my larger tracking logs last night, and decided to analyze it for Periodic Error in the mount. To help the data, I downloaded PECPrep from SourceForge. After […]

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Maintenance

G-11 Guiding Commands: ST-4 relays vs. ASCOM

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My autoguiding isn’t as straightforward as it used to be. I have a lot of new gear that I’m trying to figure out; G-11, Gemini, ASCOM, ST-4, MaxIM. Each of these adds […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

A couple of new shots near the Celestial Equator

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Got a rare clear night. It’s only been clear about 3 times since Valentine’s Day this year. I decided to force myself to shoot some galaxies in Leo. To follow up the […]

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Maintenance

Re: Yes you are crazy

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Art Morton wrote: > I do not have data to forward, but what I remember is +- 0.00 to > 0.04~0.15 on each axis. I’m averaging more in the 0.2-0.8 range (I’m […]

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Techniques

Polar Alignment Calculations

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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 […]

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Gear / Observatory / Telescope

Special Guest Star takes the mount at Hilltop O

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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 […]

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General / Maintenance / Observatory

Dome shutter is motorized again!

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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 […]

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ATM

Trixie 2017 – tube mods

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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 […]

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