Greg Marshall's Blog – June 2011 Archive (3)

Not satisfied with the results of my previous testing, I decided to try again. This time I used a technique that is directly applicable to imaging rather than a theoretical measurement of worst-case flexure. What I did was to simply capture 30 images at 2 minute intervals while guiding, then measure the position of a star in each frame to see how it varies in RA and DEC over the hour. Obviously, there is some "noise" in the measurements and I didn't bother trying to filter that out (such as… Continue

Got laid off today! It was only part time work and the lay off was expected - not a big deal. So now I can spend all (well, most) of my time on astronomy.

Coincidentally, my previous employer, Xerox, announced today that they are outsourcing most engineering to India. It has been my opinion for some time now that the company was run by fools. This is proof positive.

Neil gave me the idea of testing to see how much differential flexure I have in my side-by-side setup and I got around to doing that last night when we had partly cloudy skies such that I didn't want to try real imaging, not knowing how long it would last. My AT111EDT (with QSI 583 camera) and Orion ST80 (with Meade DSI camera) are mounted on a 3/8" aluminum plate, about 8" apart. Recently I also added an aluminum bar across the tops of the rings to couple the 2 scopes there in addition to the… Continue