Astrophotographers hangout. Invite friends and notice chat bar on bottom.
New deck and observatory install
Got the deck taken out, and my buddy and his small crew put in an 18 inch round pier with a T base 5 feet deep. The dirt in my hill is super strong and solid, and I'm guessing that pier base isn't moving at all if much at all. Just levelled the J bolts (except he used screws with flat square 3 inch plates on the end. It'll be solid. So, that part is done. Monday they install the actual deck, should be done my tuesday. Wed. my observatory shows up. Can't wait.
Comment
-
Comment by Trevor Woodrow on January 10, 2015 at 12:50am
-
Wait, did we go back in time here...Charlie your observatory comes on Monday? What happened to the one you had?
-
Comment by Russ Ruggles on December 13, 2014 at 9:48am
-
Sounds like it'll be plenty solid Charles. I went 40" deep and 24" square on both of mine and the only movement I got was during the last couple of earthquakes we had. No damage so life is good :)
-
Comment by Charles Dunlop on March 31, 2013 at 8:57pm
-
Second sub taken. 15 minutes on M1 through Halpha. Looks ok, need to go longer though do really nail detail.
-
-
Cannot wait for first light!
-
-
finally, the new OTA is being shipped this week. Last touches to this whole process
-
-
Every other time the dome would stop rotating when the open slit got to the motors. So i got more motors and just installed them in like 90 degree heat, and low and behold, no turning problems now. STOKED. FINALLY.
-
-
First light with the new observatory!!!!!!!!!!!!! not too bad. there's curvature in the field as the chip is too large without a flattenner in there, but overall not bad. Tonight i'm going to program PEC, and then focus in on a star cluster I think.
-
-
I was a little misaligned. 100+ arc seconds off in azimuth and 200 arc sec off in altitude. Tpoint alignment said I was spot on, but perhaps I slewed and aligned on the wrong stars or something, becuase clearly I wasn't. So I went to pempro again, figuring that pempro aquires real drift data without calculations so it's better. So I spent a long time really nailing it out, figured that the fog is rolling in so i might as well get it aligned properly. Got to 5.7 arc sec off in azimuth and 4.2 in altitude. That's pretty solid.
Am going to do PEC on the setup tomorrow night as I'm sure I'll only have a few hours to fiddle.
-
Comment by Marc Basti on July 20, 2012 at 12:22pm
-
Charles, looks like you're about good to go-psyched. Marc
-
-
I realigned in middle of the night and took again. Round stars so im happy. Will try to process something and post, will be an ok shot not great. Would love to hit this object with a large aperature and small fov.
About
© 2025 Created by Charles Dunlop.
Powered by
You need to be a member of AstroGab to add comments!
Join AstroGab