Last light

[Charles Dunlop]

Tonight will be my last night shooting with my observatory. Goodbye, or rather good riddance. Since I've had a dome my productivity per night has gone down a lot, driving me nuts. Firstly, had a six month fog bank so no telescoping, then when I got back on my CGE pro was acting funny and not tracking in DEC. That drove me nuts for months. Things are better now, Paramount ME is tracking like a champ, and thus everything is working again.

So here's what the new observatory will have...

Paramount ME
Paramount Pier
Technical innovations PD10 automated dome
All Sky Cam (not sure which one)
ACP with scheduler
Maxim and CCDsoft
SkyX pro
Flatman XL
Moonlite autofocuser
Lodestar guider off axis
optec pyxis LE rotator

And then any combination of:

72 mm APO refractor
127 mm APO refractor
11 inch edge HD
8 inch RC

With

SBIG 8XME internally guided with 5 position wheel
Starlight Express SXVR H18 with 7 position wheel

That's a lot of hardware. Going to take my skeshedpod down and sell it and my CGE pro.

So today it comes down, funny I have four clear nights ahead of me. But need to rebuild the deck, so time to shut it down, pull the pier out, rip up the deck, and begin putting it all back together again with solid artifical wood stuff and a more solid footing for a heavier pier setup. I'll be working this weekend that's for sure, but hell if I get my new setup going late next weekend that would be pretty rad. Totally automated amazing setup.

The only thing I could possibly upgrade from here is the OTA itself, which I won't be bothing doing for quite some time. Have enough toys to get some good shots for a while.

Complete automation, it's been a fantasy of mine for a year since Trevor and I started astrogab and mcfarlin started showing me all these astronomy tools I'd never seen before. I'm two weeks away from that, and I can't wait. Imagining PERFECT alignment, 200 point plate solved perfect measuring, etc. Game on.