TAG Trixie
Trixie rebuild 2017 – Parts is parts.
I have decided to keep the LTA as-is (I had considered moving the middle ring, but pole seats take a Lot of mental effort to do correctly, so I’m going to stick […]
Spring cleaning
I spent some time in the observatory, tidying up after a pretty nice set of imaging runs this winter. I had mounted up Cassie a while ago, but wanted to see if […]
ATM / Gear / Maintenance / Telescope
Soon, Trixie. Soon.
Because I’ve made so much progress on the observatory of late, I was looking over my Bookmarks, to see if anything needed updating. Trixie (look in the tag cloud) is on-hold right […]
Deep Sky / Gear / General / Long Exposure Photography / Maintenance / Telescope
Trixie out, Pumpkin in
I had decided that I would leave Trixie on the mount, and focus on visual astronomy for awhile. I think that the Jr. Astronomer would appreciate learning to use the big scope, […]
Trixie 2011 – mods
As part of the work party, I put Trixie back on the mount. I got everything set up, and tried some guided exposures, and there’s definitely still flexure in the rig, even […]
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
Final First Light photo
I finally got through processing all the images from the first few nights of shooting. The workflow is very slow, and I am using unfamiliar tools, but it’s starting to come back. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.