TAG Polar Alignment
Deep Sky / General / Long Exposure Photography / Observing Reports
Welcome back, Veronica — and welcome back, awful guiding problems
Well, it was clear tonight. That’s about the best thing that happened tonight. The scope booted up and is working eh, ok. The polar alignment is off, and I never did check […]
ATM / Electronics / Focuser / Gear / General / Maintenance / Observing Reports / Optics / Techniques / Technology
Murphy was an optimist.
Clear Sky Clock said it would be cloudy all night, so of course it stayed 90% clear until about midnight, when it socked in. But I’m getting ahead of myself… I decided […]
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography / Maintenance / Optics
RCC first light
The camera is out there capturing an unguided shot of M42 for the RCC’s first light image. …and here it is. As usual, it’s another M42. This is 30 frames, 2 minutes […]
Maintenance / Observing Reports
The Gizmo — I love it when a plan comes together
I deployed the new Gizmo in anger for the first time last night, pot controlling the exposure length, hooked up to the Gemini ST-4 port, hooked up to the Canon, LCD and […]
ATM / Electronics / General
Once more into the breach – new Gizmo on the way
When I started doing DSLR astrophotography, I quickly found that the on-camera limitation of 30sec exposures was frustrating. So, bulb exposures are necessary. At the time, nothing existed to easily interface my […]
polar alignment sucks
polar alignment is awful. i think it would be ok if the axes didn’t affect each other. because they do, it always seems a little like minimizing error and less like positioning […]
Rig maintenance – moving cameras around
I had moved the ST-4 to the main scope to do some periodic error testing on the mount at higher magnification. This helped me to see the errors more clearly, but also […]
G-11 PE testing — enter C9.25
I decided to try the C9.25 instead of Pumpkin to do my PE testing. With a much longer focal length, I thought that would give me more accuracy in the tracking data. […]
A Very Tough Night
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 […]
Re: Yes you are crazy
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 […]
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 […]
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Observatory
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General / Maintenance
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Mount / Observatory / Telescope
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Observatory
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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.