Saturday, July 25, 2020
Night of the Comet
What’s the ground truth about this comet? It’s the best we’ve
had in years—maybe since Hale Bopp departed the inner Solar System. But
don’t fool yourself: Hale-Bopp wasn’t just a naked eye object; it was a
naked eye object for a long, long time. And it wasn’t just bright; it was
BRIGHT. At its height, it was visible in near daylight. This visitor, on the
other hand, now requires binoculars to be seen if, like most of us, you are a
denizen of suburbia. In fact, its position meant that even when it was at its
brightest most observers needed optical aid to see much of it. If anything.
Wish I could have seen NEOWISE in its morning passage. I
love morning comets—maybe because they remind me of my first one, long ago Ikeya-Seki. The stars just didn’t align for your old Uncle this time, though.
As you might not be surprised to hear, it being July and me being down here in
Possum Swamp, the weather, including the dawn weather, has been lousy. But there was more to it than that;
your old uncle was too worried to be much in the mood to wake up at oh-dark-thirty
for comet chasing.
“Worried about what?” I
was potentially exposed to the COVID 19 virus. The details don’t matter. Well,
except for the fact that everybody involved was masked and wearing gloves and
the place where the exposure occurred was disinfected. Those things meant I wouldn’t
get sick. But I wouldn’t know that for at least ten days.
 |
| Where are you little Panstarrs? |
All this happened fairly quickly considering the fact that our poor state is
facing a huge spike in cases. About an hour after we arrived, one of the heroic
nurses was at my car window taking my temperature and my blood oxygen level. The
bad? I was running a modest fever. The good? My blood oxygen level was fine, which
I was told is more important than your temperature. Soon, a nurse had a swab up
my nose. Despite what you may have heard, that is uncomfortable but not
painful. I liken it to the feeling you’d get as a kid when you accidentally inhaled
some heavily chlorinated pool water.
Next? Back home at the New Manse, there was nothing to do
but wait and see. The fever had been worrying, but I was pretty sure I had a
mild sinus infection. At any rate, Miss D. had ordered one of those gun-like infrared
thermometers and a pulse-oxy meter from Amazon. Both insisted I was fine. Blood
oxygen in the high 90s and no more fever. Of course, your old Unk being the way
he is, that didn’t help. Every morning I’d awaken with a slightly scratchy
throat (from a night in the air conditioning) and would be sure I had
IT.
We continued to be symptom free, and five days after we were tested the results came in: NEGATIVE. In a few more days, the two weeks of
our self-quarantine were up and I was a free man. Well, free enough to at least
journey to Publix at 7 a.m. once a week for groceries and to the comic book store on Wednesdays to clear my box. The whole thing had
spooked me, and other than that I am sticking close to home. Let this be a cautionary
tale: the only reason, I’m convinced, I
wasn’t sickened and maybe worse (at my age I am definitely an “elevated risk”
kinda guy) was the mask, the gloves, social distancing, and the disinfecting we
did. I hope you also do these things, muchachos. If you are like most amateur
astronomers and like me, you are not in the spring chicken demographic and do not
want to play around with this stuff.
Be that as it may; the end of my quarantine also brought a
temporary lifting of the early evening clouds—Neo had now moved into the evening
sky. I was ready to tackle another comet in a long string of “my” comets. But how, exactly, would I do that?
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| The finished mount did look funky. |
Next question? Which binoculars? Over many years
of (occasionally) serious observing, I’ve accumulated numerous pairs of
glasses. I’ve never considered myself a real binocular fan, but, like cats, they’ve
just come to me: everything from a sophisticated
pair of 40mm roof prism binocs, to the everyday bread-and-butter 10x50s, to my big
honkin’ Zhumell Tachyon 25x100s.
Yeah, 100mm binoculars, the “six-inch refractor” of the
binocular game. We all want ‘em—or think we do. To make a long story short, about
nine years ago I found you could buy a pair of Chinese 25x100s for about
250 bucks. Not only that; they were garnering a reputation for excellent
optics. Only 250 for 4-inch binoculars? Yep. Naturally I ordered a pair and
found them to be excellent optically and at least good mechanically (you can
still buy the Tachyons, but the price is about double what it was a decade
ago).
The thing about 100mm binoculars…well the things?
They are great on the sky. Not only do they obviously gather a lot of light;
they have enough power to make them more usable in compromised skies than, say,
7x binoculars. I’ve even resolved the rings of Saturn with ‘em with fair ease.
That’s the good thing. The bad thing is that when you pass 70mms, binoculars’
weight increases exponentially. You might conceivably be able to hand-hold 80mm
glasses for short periods. 100mms? Fuhgeddabout it. And a tripod, even a big, heavy
video tripod, ain’t good enough. You need a genuine binocular mount.
And there are some very good binocular mounts out there. Like
those sold by Oberwerk (nee Bigbinoculars.com). But they don’t come cheap, and
you simply cannot compromise when it comes to 100mm binoculars. “Good enough” won’t
do. The problem was that, as you well know, Unk is a stingy soul and was even
before he retired. The solution came fairly quickly, though, in the form of the
EZ Binocular Mount kit.
 |
| Out on the CAV field. |
The assembly of the kit is a story in itself, which you can
read about here—as you may know, Unk’s
mechanical skills are somewhat lacking. I got it together successfully with the
assistance of Miss Dorothy, but was still a little skeptical. Let’s face it; it
looks funky. You’d never mistake it for anything but a kit. Ah, but when
you mount those big glasses on it out in the dark, it’s a different story. The
Peterson EZ binocular kit works better than any binocular mount I have ever
used, big or small. If my backyard experiences weren’t enough to convince me,
using the EZ on Comet Panstarrs back in 2013 sure did.
So, the Zhumells have gotten a lot of use over the nine
years I’ve owned them? Not really. The problem is that even 25x binoculars need
a dark sky to really strut their stuff. Oh, they can do alright in the typical
compromised backyard…but given the fact that you have to set up the mount to
use them at all, it’s really no more labor intensive to assemble a telescope.
And much as I love binoculars, there’s simply no doubt a scope is a more versatile
and better choice most of the time.
But not all the time. The exception is when a comet
is in the sky. Again, there is nothing, muchachos, and I do mean nothing,
that will give you a better look at a comet than big binos. Not only do you
have a wide field and plenty of light gathering power, you get that 3D effect inherent
in binoculars. There’s also the fact that it’s just more comfortable to use
both eyes than one. So, I grabbed the Zhumells' case and started hunting
for the EZ mount.
However, it was hot, muggy, buggy, and your Unk was feeling
lazy. Of course, I still have the Peterson mount, but I haven’t used it since we
moved out here to the suburbs, and knew it was in parts and pieces in several
boxes that are located somewhere. I decided to cheat. I’ve got a big
enough Manfrotto camera tripod, and since the comet would be close to the
horizon, surely that would be good enough, wouldn’t it?
 |
| ALCON 2003 |
Well, alrighty then. No 100mm binoculars for NEOWISE. We
have one of Explore Scientific’s 100mm short focal length achromatic refractors
here. On the SkyWatcher AZ-4 alt-azimuth tripod it’s not much of a pain to
set up, and it ought to perform well on the comet. But I found myself fixated
on binoculars. As above, they really are the perfect instrument for comet
viewing (and comet hunting…like many others, the late, great Comet Hyakutake was
discovered with giant binoculars). And then the solution came to me: the good, old Burgess binoculars.
As y’all have probably divined, I am not the world’s biggest
supporter of the Astronomical League. We can talk about that some Sunday perhaps,
but for now I’ll just say that whatever my feelings about the AL, I had a great
time speaking at the organization’s 2003 convention in Nashville. What went on at
the Embassy Suites hotel all those years ago (seems like just yesterday to your
aging correspondent)? Well, in addition to talks, dinners, even a little video
observing in the parking lot, and the usual things found at conventions of all
kinds, there were vendors—folks selling astrostuff.
Now, in those days, Unk was still very definitely an
astronomy gear junkie. There was simply no way I’d go home without something
new. But what? Well, there was Bill
Burgess (who is still in the astronomy business and doing well, I hear) with
his wares. Which included a pair of 15x70 binos he was offering for—get this—50
bucks. Trying them out in the dealer room, it was obvious they were well
built and seemed good optically (the stars are, of course, the only true test
for astronomy binoculars). At any rate, how could I go wrong for fifty bucks?
I couldn’t, as tests in the front yard of good, old Chaos
Manor South (remember those hallowed halls, muchachos?) showed when Dorothy and
I got home. The humble Burgesses soon became my go-to glasses. In addition to
being high in quality and rugged, their strength was and is that they offer
more light gathering power than the usual 10x50s, but in a package that is
reasonably hand-holdable. Unlike 80s, I can use these 70s for extended periods effectively
and without strain.
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| The legendary Burgess 15x70s. |
There things remained for several days. Which was not all
bad. While I waited for semi-clear conditions, the comet continued to rise
higher above the horizon though it was dimming a bit. Finally, early last week,
I got what I reckoned might be my last crack at NEOWISE what with a storm
churning up in the Gulf of Mexico.
Out to the deck me and the Burgesses went again. Same
routine: scan down from the bowl of the
dipper while moving to the west. And there is it was. My lasting impression of this one?
It was a perfect little comet in the Burgesses with a tiny head, some coma visible,
and a cute little tail that extended farther than I thought it would in the
nasty skies. A friend, a talented observer, managed to see the comet much better than I did from
darker skies, and was able to glimpse the ion tail. Me? No way, but I was satisfied
with what I’d seen. Which was admittedly better than what I saw of Comet
Ikeya-Seki all those decades ago. Frankly, I’ve never seen a bad comet, y’all, and
this was most assuredly a good one. Hope you saw her or get to see her before she is gone.
What next? Obviously, I need to proceed to night three of the New Herschel Project. But as you can probably tell from the above, the weather down here in the Swamp is unlikely to allow that anytime soon. So, it’s, as Rod’s Mama used to tell him frequently when he wanted something, a great, big “We’ll see.”
Sunday, July 05, 2020
#562: The New Herschel Project Night 2, 21 Down 379 to Go
For the moment, I will not tackle the existential
query, “Why, Rod? Why more
Herschels? Why now?” Instead, I shall stick to explicating the
rules of engagement.”
It was hot, humid, and hazy on the longest day of the year.
Not a recipe for pleasant observing, muchachos, but your old Unk knew he needed
to do something about those Herschels, and it’s rare of late for me to get a
night that’s just hazy, as it looked like this one would be. So, when it
finally got dark, I got myself outside, uncovered the scope, sat down at the
laptop on the deck and got to work…
But, to backtrack for a minute, y'all, I mentioned “rules of engagement”
up above (paraphrasing the Julie – Julia blog that
inspired the original Herschel Project). What are they? The New Herschel
Project will be done from my backyard with 10-inch and smaller telescopes.
Likely, the 8-inch Edge 800 will be the baseline instrument. However, I suspect Charity Hope Valentine, my ETX125, will get a shot when those dark(er) winter skies come 'round, and the 10-inch Dob, Zelda, will be in the backyard when I need a little visual horsepower. Just as with the
big Project, I shall use video when appropriate and visual observing when
appropriate. How long? I'll stick to what I said last time:
365 days. 400 objects. One astronomer and a less than
perfect suburban backyard sky.
How far will it go?
The New Herschel Project. Now on a computer terminal
near you!
To say I was a bit nervous about Emma following her surgery would be an understatement.
Did I get her corrector centered properly? Would she still be in collimation? Time
to find out. I lit-off the CPWI software, the New Project's "NexRemote," selected StarSense Auto as my alignment
type, and hit the go button.
Just as with an alignment done with the StarSense auto-align camera’s
normal hand control, the Advanced VX moved Emma to four different fields and
plate solved on each. As I mentioned in the blog entry on CPWI not long ago,
the only difference was that instead of having to squint at the tiny text on
the hand control—even smaller than that of the standard NexStar Plus HC—I could
read about what the StarSense and AVX were doing on the laptop screen in characters
large enough not to challenge your old Uncle’s fading eyesight.
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| Unk's "observatory." |
Directly—in about the same amount of time it would have
taken to do the StarSense alignment with the HC—CPWI declared we was
done. Since I’d had an at least brief opportunity to test the CWPI StarSense
goto alignment accuracy some weeks back, I wasn’t overly concerned about that. On that
night the program delivered results that seemed to be every bit as good as what
the hand control would have produced.
I was curious to see if a star would be placed in the
small field of the Mallincam Xtreme riding on Emma’s rear (ahem) cell. Even
though I’d screwed a Meade f/3.3 reducer on the scope ahead of the camera, the
Xtreme’s tiny CCD chip still produces a limited field. I had already started the
Mallincam Xtreme control program and set the camera for “sense up” and an
exposure of about 2-seconds, which is good for framing and focusing.
“Hmmm…how about that bright one over yonder?” I located
Arcturus on the CPWI star map displayed before me on the computer’s screen,
clicked on it, and hit the goto button. Emma immediately started making for the
star at her top slewing speed. When the AVX’s weasels-with-tuberculosis motor
sound stopped, there was Arcturus, way out of focus but nevertheless on the screen of the
old portable DVD player I use as a Mallincam display. In the course of focusing
the star, I could see diffraction rings and could tell I had—somewhat amazingly, I
reckon—maintained collimation when I put Emma back together.
Well, alrighty then. Time to get to work on the New Herschel
Project. No, the sky was not perfect—some clouds and a lot of haze—but it
was better than it had been for weeks or would probably be for weeks more, so there was no time to waste. The
camera was obviously ready to roll, and a quick test showed my little Orion
StarShoot DVR was also good.
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| CPWI alignment choices. |
So…was it an Uncle Rod night or not (if you’re a
newbie here, that means a night of fumbling and
bumbling)? It was not, muchachos, mostly not, anyhow. The closest thing to a serious hiccup was that the Orion imaging filter (a mild Deep Sky type filter) I’d
experimentally screwed onto the Xtreme’s nosepiece didn’t really seem to help that much.
It also gave the images you’ll see below a strong bluish cast. These types of
filters work pretty well for DSLR imaging, but I believe I can achieve better
results with the Mallincam in the backyard just by playing with its exposure,
gain, color, and contrast controls.
I did run into a problem with SkyTools when I linked
it to CPWI. Bringing up the Herschel 400 list would cause the program to
crash. That only happened with that list and no others, strangely. I’ll have to do some
troubleshooting soon, but it was easy enough just to enter object IDs from the
list manually into CPWI rather than clicking on objects in SkyTools 3.
Finally, I don’t know what I was thinkin’ (probably “not
much”), but instead of using the 2-inch visual back I normally employ with the Mallincam, I attached the camera
to the Edge’s stock 1.25-inch back which is overly long and which resulted in some vignetting in
the bright skies and a little more reduction than I like. But, hey, what can I
say? It wouldn’t be an Uncle Rod night if it weren’t, well, an Uncle Rod night, right?
Anyhoo, below are the targets Emma and I checked off the
list on this second evening. There’s no particular rhyme or reason to the order in which
we observed them. It had more to do with what was in the clear at any given
time than any overarching plan for the night.
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| M105 and company. |
M105 (NGC 3379)
The ol’ Lion, Leo, was riding high, and Messier 105, a bright
elliptical galaxy and one of the Ms in the Herschel list, was an obvious target.
The question really wasn’t whether I’d get M105, but whether the camera would
see the two dimmer companion galaxies, NGC 3384 and 3389. Verdict? The two
bonus galaxies were there—if just barely (they are easier to see on the video
than they are on this single frame grab here).
M61 (NGC 4303)
Next up was Virgo’s bright, near face-on spiral, M61. I’d
have gone there anyway—it’s one of the showpieces of spring even from poor
sites/skies—but I was doubly interested in this SAB island universe because of its recent supernova. Would it still be bright enough to detect in these skies (I hadn’t
checked)? Yep, there it was among a few hot pixels, SN 2020jfo. That was cool.
But what was just as cool was seeing M61 show off its spiral arms in the
frankly horrible heavens.
M104 (NGC 4594)
Also in Virgo, is another Messier treat that is an aitch,
M104, the justly famous Sombrero Galaxy. With the Virgin riding high, the
galaxy cut through the nasty haze and light pollution with fair ease. The basic
shape with “crown,” “brim,” and dust lane was more than obvious despite skies
that were becoming ever more punk.
M107 (NGC 6171)
Ophiuchus’ M107 is certainly not its best globular star
cluster, but this Shapley – Sawyer Class 10 (loosely concentrated) star ball is
a Herschel and was out of the trees, so there went me and Mrs. Peel. I was a
little concerned we might not see much…this is a loose cluster (which equals “dimmer”)
and it was low in the sky. But, hey, I was using a MALLINCAM. Sure enough,
there it was on the screen showing considerable resolution (especially in the
video).
NGC 6369 The Little Ghost Nebula
The Little Ghost (planetary) Nebula is another of Ophiuchus
huge trove of deep sky objects. It is also a Herschel, so it was what was next on the itinerary. It’s
fairly dim and also small at about 28” across, so it’s not something that will put your
dadgum eye out. It was not bad on this night, showing off it’s pink color and small ring shape, both of which things can be hard to make out in an eyepiece.
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| Pretty M61 and supernova. |
NGC 6356
Also in the realm of the Serpent Bearer and not far from
the Little Ghost is the magnitude 7.4 globular star cluster NGC 6356. I was
pleasantly surprised by this little guy. Lots of stars were resolved by Mrs.
Peel and the Xtreme.
NGC 6342
Another, dimmer, glob, NGC 6342, was close at hand, so it was
our next stop. What me and Mrs. Peel saw was obviously a globular—there was
quite a bit of resolution around its periphery—but it’s relatively small size
for a glob (6’) and low altitude prevented us from getting a good look.
NGC 6235
This next glob is brighter than 6342, but it is looser and even
smaller. There was obviously a scattering of very dim, very tiny stars onscreen,
but more than that neither I nor Emma could say.
NGC 6287
Annnnd…NGC 6287 is another of Ophiuchus many globular
clusters. It’s another dim one at about magnitude 10. It’s also small at 5’
across. Nevertheless, we saw a bunch of teeny weeny stars surrounding an obvious
central condensation in this medium concentration (VII) star ball.
M108
Did you know Ursa Major’s justly famous galaxy M108 is a
Herschel? Well it is. Alas, it's mostly famous for its proximity to M97, the Owl
Nebula. M108, a near edge-on, is badly harmed by light pollution. Under dark
skies, it can almost rival M82. In the suburbs, it is usually nothing more than
a dim streak. On this night, even with the Mallincam, it wasn’t much more than
that. Oh, there were a few spots of condensation, but, yeah, mostly, "dim smudge."
NGC 2985
This magnitude 10.1 Ursa Major Galaxy was just a round
fuzzball on the screen. I didn’t expect much else. It’s close to face-on in its
orientation to us (always tough), and it takes some dark skies to allow even a long exposure to pull out the arms of this active galaxy.
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| Good, old Sombrero. |
NGC 2987
A magnitude 11.1 barred lenticular galaxy, NGC 2987 can show considerable detail under dark skies. On
this night what was visible was a round nucleus and some hints of its bar.
NGC 3077
There wasn’t much to see in this mag 10.6 face-on irregular
galaxy. But there never is, even in large telescopes. However, I was pleased to see that
the galaxy appeared distinctly oval instead of being just a round fuzzball.
NGC 2976
This Sc spiral was visible—but only just. While it’s a
strongly oval intermediated inclination spiral galaxy and shows plenty of splotchy detail in its disk under good conditions, on this night it was an
easily passed over oval of subtle brightening in the field.
NGC 4041
In deep photos, this small (2.6’ across) face on Sc galaxy
shows a welter of delicate arms. To my C8 and Mallincam, alas, it only showed a
bright core and a very subtle disk of haze
around that.
NGC 4036
NGC 4036 was at least slightly more interesting than the
previous object. If only relatively so. It’s an edge on lenticular, and lenticular
galaxies don’t have much—if any—detail to show. In my scope on this
(had to admit) yucky night, this 4’ across object was obviously strongly
elongated, but that was all I could say.
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| Little but cute ghost. |
NGC 3945
Under good conditions, a deep sky video camera can show an
image of this barred lenticular that doesn’t look much different from its
Palomar Observatory Sky Survey plates—a bright round center embedded in a subtle
haze with the same of the iris of a cat’s eye (seen here in a Herschel Project
shot from dark skies). On this evening it was just a small bright spot in some
very subtle and shapeless haze.
NGC 2742
This is a magnitude 12, multi-armed intermediate spiral galaxy.
That’s what it is from dark skies, anyhow. On this evening I had to stare at
the screen for quite a while to assure myself I was seeing anything.
NGC 5322
NGC 5322 is a large (6’ across) elliptical galaxy with a strong
oval shape. Curiously, while I could make out its oval envelope, I could not easily detect the brighter center of this magnitude 11 sprite. Go figger, I always say.
And, with that Ursa Major fuzzie recorded, Urania closed
down her sky, drawing a pall across it with a flood of thick, lightning-festooned
clouds. I was satisfied, though. Well, as satisfied as I ever am when an observing run ends before I am ready to quit. I hadn’t covered a huge amount of territory, but I had
at least scratched the surface of the friendly Herschel 400. And I’d been
assured that my beloved telescope, Emma Peel, came through her recent travails in good shape. I covered Emma, brought the computer and other electronic gear inside, poured out some "sarsaparilla," and relaxed in the blessed cool of the den.
What’s next and when for the good, old AstroBlog? I cannot
say when “next” will be, because that depends on the cooperation of the Possum
Swamp summer sky. The Moon needs to get out of the way, too. And I don’t think I
have anything else to bring to you at the moment other than the next installment of the New
Project. But you never know what will enter my mind (such as it is). So,
muchachos, I guess that means "I will see you when I see you."
Sunday, June 28, 2020
#563: “Celestron Screws Up” or “Poor Emma”
It’s a good thing this is a family friendly blog, muchachos,
or that title above would have been a lot nastier. As most of y’all
know, when it comes to SCTs I’ve always been a Celestron man. Have been for
many a long year. Will that change? I don’t know, but I’m plenty put out
at them right now. The way I feel at the moment, if I were to buy another SCT
it would have a blue tube, or would at least be a used Celestron from
before the Synta era.
Until now, the Celestron scopes I’ve owned have just kept on
keeping on year after year after year with only the most minor of
minor maintenance needed—like occasional cleaning of the inside surface of their
corrector plates. So, imagine my surprise and anger when I discovered my
beloved Edge 800, Mrs. Emma Peel, had a serious
problem thanks to a mistake made at the factory and would require major
maintenance after only seven years of ownership.
I’m not sure exactly when Emma’s problem began to make
itself known, but I first noticed it many months back: a shiny inch-wide streak on the inside of the
tube running from almost the corrector to almost the primary mirror. I assumed
this was from dew that had condensed and slightly discolored the inside surface
of the tube. I figured it would eventually disappear and wasn’t a big deal one
way or the other.
Then, when I had the scope out the other day getting ready
for the start of the New Herschel Project, I noticed the streak was still there
and more prominent than ever. I got worried then. I was afraid that, rather than being a stain left by condensation, it might be
lubricant from the exterior of the baffle tube or from the focuser that had
liquified and run down the tube. That could be a problem, since if the
tube got even somewhat hot, that lubricant might begin to vaporize and be
deposited on corrector or—worse—primary mirror. I resolved to open Emma up and
do some cleaning. I hadn’t cleaned the inside of her corrector since I bought
the scope in the spring of 2013, so it was about time for that anyway.
 |
| Prepare a good, safe place to pull the corrector. |
OK…so time to pull Emma’s corrector. Early one morning, I
prepared a place as I always do with plenty of towels for cushioning in the
event the lens gets away from me. I also put a folded towel under the corrector
assembly so the tube pointed up a little so the corrector plate wouldn't be likely to fall out when the retaining ring was removed. I thought this would be
pretty standard stuff. It would certainly not be the first time I’d torn an
SCT down to parade rest. A colleague at the university once timed me to see how
quickly I could get a corrector plate off and back on on one of the physics
department’s scopes (a student had somehow managed to drop an eyepiece cap down
the rear port). I set a personal record of seven minutes that time.
I intended to take my time on this one, though. It was
somewhat new territory in at least one regard. In the past, Celestron scopes
have used little shims around the periphery of the corrector to properly center
it—the center position with regard to the primary may not be centered on the
corrector mounting on the tube due to mechanical variances. These shims in the past have been little pieces of cork, or, more often, folded paper…pieces of Post-it
notes in recent times.
When you put the scope back together, you naturally want to
get the corrector properly re-centered in the interests of best optical
performance. It was not that hard to use a pencil on the lip of the tube to
mark where the shims went, but, yeah, the little pieces of paper deal was kinda
fussy and silly. The Edges abandon that for nylon hex screws around the
corrector periphery. They thread through the “ring” on the end of the tube, the
corrector assembly, and adjust centering. I think it’s a pretty good system. If
Celestron isn’t using this on all their tubes, they should be.
I had a standard Celestron OTA here for a review a while
back, but li’l old me can’t remember if the nylon screws were used on it or
not. Frankly, a lot of things that happened in the year or two before my
accident in the late winter of 2019 are strangely fuzzy in my memory now. Go
figure. Anyhow, maybe one of you, dear readers, can answer that question for
me.
 |
| Mark the cetering screw you begin with so you don't lose track. |
So, first order of business was backing out those screws
half a turn using a 2mm hex wrench. If/when you follow in Unk’s footsteps, mark
the first one you loosen so you don’t lose track. That done, the next step in Edge
corrector pulling is the same as it ever was.
Firstly, remove the screws that hold the plastic retaining
ring against the corrector. Unk put all them screws in a little paper bowl…small
screws love to run away and hide on the floor of Unk’s radio shack, which is
also his Workshop of the Telescopes. The plastic retaining ring is now
accompanied by some foam-like gasket material. Guess that’s OK, though I don’t
see much need.
Before proceeding, use a soft pencil or marker to mark the
rotational position of the corrector. Celestron no longer engraves a serial
number on the corrector periphery, so you can’t use that for indexing anymore. Retainer
off and put in a safe place, I removed the scope’s Faststar secondary and put it
in a safe place too. “Welp, now all I gotta do is pull the corrector out.”
Alas, Mr. Corrector didn’t want to budge. It’s not unusual
for correctors to get “welded” to the corrector assembly by the passage of
time. A little prying with a jeweler’s screwdriver always frees them, though. However,
I could tell immediately that wouldn’t work this time. The feel told me the
corrector was still firmly, and I do mean firmly, seated in place. What
to do? What I always do in these situations. I stopped, trotted back to the house, made
myself another cup of java on the fricking Keurig, and considered the situation.
Somewhat more awake, and equipped with my glasses, I took a
second look at the corrector. “Oh, Celestron, you &%$*!!@ idiots!”
My now clearer eyes revealed four spots of RTV where the corrector had been glued
in place. Why would they do such a thing? Search me. The Nylon screws and the
retainer are more than enough to hold the lens in place. And surely, they
are aware the corrector will have to be removed sooner rather than later for corrector
cleaning or some other reason—like weird streaks of something on the tube
interior. What were they thinking?
Once Unk calmed down a little, a boxcutter retrieved from
the shack’s bench made short work of that dagnabbed RTV, and the corrector was
off and placed in a safe spot. Your old uncle wasn’t quite fuming now.
But he would shortly be fuming again in epic proportions. To the tune of one of
his classic melt-downs.
 |
| Removing the retaining ring. |
“Hokay, let’s get that funny-looking streak cleaned up.” I
thought I’d probably better start gently with just a damp paper towel—damp with tap
water. I scrubbed a little. “Funny. Doesn’t seem to be coming off. Seems to be…getting
worse.” One look at the towel told the tale: It was black with stuff that seemed to have
the consistency of lamp black—if you’re old enough to remember what that was. “What
the—?!”
What was going on was all too obvious. The paint
on the interior of the tube was coming off with gentle scrubbing. The
streak hadn’t been some contaminant; it had been the paint failing. Why?
Whoever ran the sprayer through the interior of the aluminum tubing to paint it
black at the factory in the PRC hadn’t properly cleaned the aluminum first. A
little googling later on the freaking Internet soon showed I am not the only
person to have experienced this. And that those people I read about who’d
reported the problem to Celestron all received the same response, “First we’ve
heard of that problem.” Uh-huh.
When Unk recovered from a meltdown wherein he assumed the character of a small, emotionally disturbed child, it
was time to consider what to do about Emma. Ship her to Celestron? Nope. Not
only was I not exactly in the mood to deal with those suckers, I didn’t want to
pay shipping—even if only one way if Celestron agreed to that. And with the Covid 19 virus still running rampant, who knew how long they'd hang onto the scope? I didn’t
want to devise a shipping container, either (after years of ownership I didn’t think
I needed to hang onto the box the OTA came in any longer). Finally, I didn’t want
to subject my telescope to the tender mercies of UPS.
What I’d have to
do was clean as much of the old paint off as possible and repaint the bad area.
First thing to do was mask and glove up and visit Home
Depot. A few minutes turned up a small can of high-quality flat black paint. Latex
paint. I was loath to use some kind of oil paint with its associated fumes on
the scope’s semi-sealed interior. Oh, and a good quality, small brush. Unless I
wanted to pull the primary and do a really complete tear down, which I didn’t,
brushing would be the only way. Even a small roller would be likely to generate
tiny drops of paint and contaminate the primary.
 |
| The crux of the problem--after some gentle scrubbing. |
The actual job was not as bad as I’d feared. I cleaned off
as much paint as I could in the obviously affected area (my damp cloth easily
got me down to bare metal). That done, I
brushed on two light coats of paint. The result looked pretty good. Now, brushed-on
paint will never be quite as even or pretty looking as a spray job, but maybe
you don’t want it to be so even and pretty. A little texture can help
reduce scattered light. One thing was sure:
my paint was a lot blacker than what Celestron used, which was
more like “medium gray.”
While the paint was drying, I did some more looking around
the OTA. “Well…there’s another spot. Oh, and one over there too. It became
obvious the entire tube interior had to be repainted. Which I did, exercising
care not to get any paint on the primary mirror. It turned out rather well, I
think. I’m just hoping I cleaned well enough in the worst spots to get the
paint to adhere, and that in the other places the latex will act as a sealer.
Time will tell, I reckon. Anyhow, I left the paint to dry overnight before
proceeding to reassembly.
Painting done; I cleaned the interior surface of the
corrector plate using my time-honored method; one I’ve been using for well over
30 years. What’s required is a box of Kleenex, the unscented and un-lotioned
variety; a can of canned air; and a bottle of original (blue) Windex. While
some folks worry that something in Windex might somehow harm the optical
coatings on a corrector, that has certainly not been the case with any of the
many, many telescopes I’ve used it on over the years. Remember, lens coatings
are tough, anyway, very tough; they are entirely different from the coatings on
first-surface mirrors.
Anyhoo, what I do is blow any dust off the lens’ surface
using the canned air. Like Windex, canned air will not hurt your corrector. Do
hold the can upright and keep it about 18-inches away. Next, I spritz a Kleenex
with a little Windex and swab gently starting at the secondary mount and
proceeding outwards, changing tissues every once in a while. Finally, I dry the
corrector with fresh, clean tissues. To finish up, I use the canned air to get
rid of any lint left by the Kleenex. Again, this method will not hurt your
lens, and Windex does a better—far better—job than any lens cleaning fluid I’ve
ever used.
Next morning, it was time to get poor Emma back together and
off the operating table. No real surprises. The little studs Celestron places
around the corrector periphery to engage the dust cap make it kind of a pain to
get the retainer back on—you have to bend it gently and slip it into place.
That done, retighten the centering screws by the amount you loosened them,
replace the screws in the retainer (just snug only), and you are done.
 |
| As good as new? I hope so. |
As you can see, the girl was back to being her usual
photogenic self. And I was pretty sure she’d get a clean bill of health under
the stars once I got some of those increasingly rare clear skies. While
Tropical Storm Cristobal didn’t go straight over our heads, it came close
enough to dump tons of rain.
The denouement, when the evil old clouds finally scudded off for a couple of evenings? I got Emma out for both visual and video observing (which you will read about next week) and she performed just as well as she ever has. She was even still in collimation. The paint job is holding up despite a couple of days under a Telegizmos cover in the heat and humidity of the backyard, so all is well for now and Unk has his fingers and toes crossed.
So, anyhow, what’s my takeaway? I’m still mad at Celestron.
I didn’t go out and buy an Edge 800 the day they hit the streets, so this
wasn’t a case of early adopter syndrome. And painting the interior of the tube
should have been something they could have done successfully no matter what the
design of the scope.
But that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. I plan to stop
stewing about it and get out under the stars with Mrs. Peel as often as I can
in the service of the New Herschel Project. That’s what our magnificent
obsession is about, not worrying over the depredations of telescope companies.
Book Plug Department
This time, that plug is for my own book, the 2nd Edition of Choosing and Using a New CAT. I am as happy with this one as I am with anything I've written, and hope you will be too. It is now available from Amazon in both print and Kindle editions.
Book Plug Department
Sunday, June 21, 2020
#562: The New NexRemote
Following my re-checkout of my Losmandy GM811G mount after not
having used it for way too long, it was time to get to work on the New
Herschel Project, muchachos. But then
thunder began to rumble. After several days, I threw in the towel and hauled
the scope and my beloved Losmandy inside.
A week later, I thought I might finally get started on the
New Project. The scope and camera to do that would be my Celestron Edge 800
SCT, Emma Peel, and the Mallincam Xtreme. Why not the Mallincam Junior Pro or
Revolution Imager? The need to get some Herschels under my belt.
I’ve used the Xtreme recently (in the course of writing a Sky
& Telescope article) and wouldn’t have to waste time re-familiarizing
myself with the camera. I will certainly get to the other two video cameras,
since many of you have asked about them. While I’ll turn to visual as
well as often as possible, a video camera is usually better suited to the typically
hazy suburban deep sky of Possum Swamp in late spring and early summer.
Initially, Thursday night looked fairly good. The Clear Sky
Clock, Scope Nights, and the Weather Channel were agreeing it would be the
first in a string of relatively passable evenings for observing. But then,
despite the Weather Channel still forecasting “clear,” clouds began to fill the
sky. I set up the Edge and the Celestron Advanced VX mount in the backyard
anyway. What could happen?
Yes, I know I need to get back to the Losmandy mount and get
squared away with the Ethernet interface and other software again, but I had a
motive for setting up the smaller mount. I’d replaced the AVX mount’s Real Time
Clock battery, and, as with the Losmandy, I wanted to make sure the AVX functioned
properly after the change. I had little doubt it would be OK, but you never
know. Also, frankly, the sky was looking worse than ever. The AVX is easier to
lug in and out than the GM811, and I can convince myself to get it into the
backyard even if the weather’s looking dicey.
Also, I would also be able to try something new with the AVX.
Your benighted old Uncle Rod learned something. Celestron’s CWPI
program (“Celestron – Planewave Instruments;” the program was developed in
association with Planewave) now works with the Advanced VX mount—it was
originally exclusive to the CGX models.
Now, no doubt most of y’all already knew that, but
remember, when it comes to astronomy—and more than a few other things—2019 was a lost year for your Uncle. Anyhow, I’d heard
a lot about CWPI. It’s sort of like a modern NexRemote, but with
model building and star charting added, and I was anxious to try it with my AVX
to see if it might fill the same role in the New Project that NexRemote
filled in the old.
So, the plan was, the plan was…get started with CPWI.
I’d go for the gold with the program to include interfacing it to the Celestron
StarSense alignment camera and my Wireless Wingman gamepad (yes, the same
Wingman I used with NexRemote for so many years). If everything was hunky-dory, I might even try
connecting SkyTools 3 to CPWI, which appeared to be possible, and
start running the Herschel list.
“But Uncle Rod, don’t you know SkyTools4 is out?” I do, Skeezix. I even have a copy of the “Imaging”
version, which I reviewed for the Second Edition of Choosing and Using a New CAT. But the imaging version is maybe a little bit of
overkill for what I’d be doing, and I do not yet have a copy of SkyTools
4 Visual, so it would be good, old ST3, which saw me through the original Herschel
Project.
Set up Thursday afternoon was OK, if not exactly a joy—it’s
already awfully warm here. I knew if I waited till the cool of the evening,
though, I might lose the will to mess with all the video gear and the computer,
so I got on it. The AVX and the SCT are not too bad, and I was able to set
everything up without incident. Well, only one. I started to pick up a heavy
equipment case with my “bad” arm and it swiftly told me not to do that.
So, it finally got dark Thursday night just as Rod’s favorite 10-meter net (The Lockdown Fun Net, Thursdays, 1900L, 0000Z, 28.420 MHz) was wrapping
up after a rollicking session that lasted far longer than usual…10-meters was
“open” and we had W2s, W3s, W8s and more check-in for what is usually a local
net here in Four Land. Walking out of the shack, I saw what I pretty much expected to see: brighter stars winking in and out as bands of
clouds and haze began to move in on what had been a clear sky in the afternoon.
Naturally.
 |
| Typical Possum Swamp spring sky. |
What was it like coming back to polar alignment on the
Advanced VX from the Losmandy? Like most other Chinese mounts, the AVX uses
bolts for altitude and azimuth adjustment. Good thing is these bolts at least
have nice, large handles as compared to the old CG5. Polar aligning the AVX is
more “twitchy,” but it wasn’t hard for me to get the error under 15-arc
seconds. That done, I covered the scope up and went inside to watch the 100th
episode of the exceedingly silly Ghost Adventures on cable TV.
Friday evening found me hoping for at least sucker holes as
darkness arrived in Hickory Ridge. How’d it go? I guess you could say it was a
classic Unk Rod evening. Oh, it started out promisingly enough. The sky
wasn’t exactly clear, but most of it was OK. A check of date and time in
the NexStar HC said ever’thing was cool with the RTC battery. The CPWI
software connected to the AVX through the hand controller without complaint.
OK. Fine Business. Guess I’ll start an alignment, a StarSense alignment.
I mashed the appropriate button, but instead of starting the
alignment, CPWI asked me if I wanted to calibrate the StarSense. I
wasn’t sure if I did nor not. However, I hadn’t used it in a pretty good while
and this was my first time to use it with CPWI, so I thought that might
be a good idea. The program instructed me to slew to a bright star, and even
highlighted some suggestions on the star chart. OK. Well, how about Arcturus. I
clicked goto, and off the mount went.
Despite a very good polar alignment, when the mount stopped,
the star was not in the field of the Mallincam. Alrighty then, I left the deck for the yard and peered through Mrs. Peel’s
Rigel Quick Finder. The star was reasonably close, but no cigar. A degree or
two away, mebbe. I’d just center it up and… Wait. How would I center it? You
cannot use the HC with CPWI interfaced to the mount. “Oh, yeah, a
joystick just like in the NexRemote days.” I’d thought that might be
necessary, and had hauled out the old Wireless Wingman.
I went to the gamepad set up screen where I was told to
press “start” on the Wingman. I did. Repeatedly. What happened? Nuttin’ honey.
So, I spent the next half hour trying everything I could think of to make the
software connect to that old game controller. Nothing worked. What would
I do? I recalled I had a wired Xbox controller in the house. I went in and got
it, plugged it into the USB hub, and the computer made its bing-bong noise and happily
set it up.
OK. Let’s see what CPWI thinks of this one. It
liked the Xbox controller just fine, picking it up immediately and sending me
to a configuration screen. OK, I’ll just take this out to the scope and center
that dad-blasted Arcturus. Sorry, Unk. The cord on the joystick was about
3-feet too short. Luckily, one of my few remaining braincells fired and I
recalled I had a 6-foot USB extension cable. I even knew where it was. Fetched
it, plugged it between Xbox controller and PC, and had enough slack to get my
eye behind the Quick Finder. I centered that pesky star well enough that it was
visible on the Mallincam display, and went back to the PC and did the fine
centering with the Mallincam’s crosshair overlay and CPWI’s virtual HC.
The program seemed right happy then. Said it had done a
plate solve and yadda-yadda-yadda, did I want to start an automatic StarSense
alignment? I darned sure did after wasting so much time. Ha! Clouds were
pouring in from the west now, impelling me to throw the Big Switch.
So, yeah, it was a prototypal Unk Rod evening. But as with
most of those, I learned some stuff about CPWI—mostly how to navigate the new software—and
now felt fairly comfortable with it. What next? Well, Saturday evening was
slated to be about the same as Friday. If I could just get one freaking H-400
in the can, your old Uncle would be a happy camper.
The sky was clearing nicely late Friday afternoon, but
then, as I was out for my evening stroll around Hickory Ridge, my phone beeped
with a notification from the cotton-picking Weather Channel. The sky was pretty
and blue, but this missive insisted there were severe thunderstorms just to the
west. Nevertheless, I thought I’d be OK; it looked like the storms would slide
past us to the northwest.
About half way through watching the latest episode of Harley
Quinn’s show, I figgered I’d better check on the scope and all (I’d uncovered
Mrs. Peel and had everything ready to go on the deck—computer, video display,
etc.). One look at the sky, and I covered the scope up in a hurry and moved the
rest of the stuff inside. It was just getting dark, but it was still light
enough for Unk to see threatening clouds blowing in from the West. There was a
strong breeze stirring and a feel in the air that portended “b-a-d weather
coming.”
There was bad weather coming, culminating in a
forebodingly early Tropical Storm, Cristobal, in advance of which, I naturally
moved mount and telescope inside. The storm was minor in nature, but it did
bring wind gusts of 30mph and dump about 6-inches of rain, so it was good Mrs.
Peel was safe and snug inside.
Following the storm, the weather improved slowly. It wasn’t
good enough for me to get Emma and the Xtreme out, but it was good enough for
me to get my old friend, my ETX125, Charity Hope Valentine, out of her case and
working again (which you read about last week). That night with Charity Hope
Valentine became Night One of the New Project if just barely. I observed a
grand total of exactly one object. After that, I sat and waited for
better conditions, which it appeared might come the following Tuesday.
 |
| CPWI's initial display. |
First task once the stars winked on Tuesday night was to see
if I could really get CPWI pointing at objects and, just as importantly,
interfaced to SkyTools 3. If either thing didn’t work well or reliably,
I’d just go back to using the (StarSense) hand control with SkyTools and/or
Stellarium. Both things had to work if CPWI were to be part of
the New Herschel Project, if it were to be the new NexRemote.
Alrighty, then. I decided to start out with just an
eyepiece. Leaving the Xtreme out of the picture initially would allow me to
focus on CPWI. So, my good old 13mm Ethos went into the William Optics
SCT diagonal I’d screwed onto (ahem) Emma’s rear. That would yield 154x, and
despite the eyepiece’s large field would give CPWI’s pointing prowess a
good test (I left the reducer off so the scope would be working at f/10).
Polar alignment complete and mount powered on, I started CPWI
on the laptop and was presented by the display you see above. Next step was getting
the mount talking to the software by choosing the connection type under the
Connection menu on the left toolbar. There are three possibilities: Hand Controller, Wi-Fi, or USB. Most of us
will use Hand Controller, which means you’ve got a Celestron serial cable (or a
USB cable) plugged into the base of the HC. If you’ve got a Celestron Evolution
scope or one of their wi-fi dongles on another Celestron rig, you’ll use “Wi-Fi.”
Finally, Celestron’s CGX German mounts allow you to use a USB cable plugged directly
into a USB port on the mount.
 |
| Select your alignment method. |
If you choose to do a “manual” alignment, a CPWI alignment, the program will select four points (stars) it believes are good alignment choices, and you’ll center and accept them much as you would with a hand control. The difference with CPWI is you can continue adding as many points to the sky model as desired.
Unk, lazy sort he is, naturally had the StarSense hooked to
the mount. Since I’d calibrated it on a star on my previous night out with the
software, all I had to do was start the normal StarSense four-star-field automatic
alignment. That wasn’t much different than it would have been with the hand
control except I could read what the camera was doing on the laptop screen
instead of having to squint at a tiny hand control display. After about the
same amount of time it would have taken the hand control, CPWI announced
we were aligned.
If, unlike Unk, you have not already polar aligned the
mount, you may do an AllStar Polar Alignment with the program following either
type of goto alignment. Let me add that many of the usual hand control features like
PPEC, parking, changing slew rates, etc. can be done with CPWI. Which is
a good thing, since as mentioned earlier you cannot use your hand control at
the same time you are using the program. It is in a “boot loader” mode and
utterly unresponsive.
“Hokay. Let’s see if CPWI aligned anything.” Peering
around the patio umbrella on the deck and up at the sky showed bright Arcturus
riding high. I located the sparkler on CPWI’s star map, clicked on it, clicked
“slew,” and the mount and Mrs. Peel headed for the star just as they would have
done with Stellarium or any other program. Trotted out to the scope, and
there was Arcturus sitting pretty in the field center.
 |
| Ready to begin a StarSense alignment. |
How did I do that nudging? Well, I could have had the laptop
set up next to the scope and used the program’s onscreen direction buttons, but
that wouldn’t have been very convenient. Instead, I used the Xbox gamepad. It
took a little fumbling to get it going again, but when I did, it worked just
ducky for the rest of the evening. If you are going to be using CPWI
without a StarSense, a gamepad is vital because you’ll be centering
numerous stars to do your goto alignment. A wireless PC or Xbox gamepad would
be best. Me? Since I’m mainly gonna be sitting at the PC and viewing images on
a video screen, my wired controller is more than adequate.
I sent the scope to quite a few other targets, no problem. Well,
other than most looked pretty putrid in the haze. All that remained now was to
get SkyTools 3 running with CPWI, attach the Mallincam to the
scope, and knock off some Herschels.
After using SkyTools with NexRemote for so
many years, the concept of using it with CPWI was easy to
understand: I’d connect SkyTools
to the scope through the program, not directly. The procedure for doing
that is different than with NexRemote, but the result is the same.
Instead of establishing a virtual port for SkyTools with NexRemote,
what you do with this modern software is start up SkyTools’ Realtime (its
goto module) and use the ASCOM Chooser to select “CPWI” as the
telescope.
As with the Gamepad, it took a little of Unk’s patented fooling
around to get it going, but once I did, SkyTools 3 worked
faultlessly with CPWI. I’d click on an object on my SkyTools
observing list, SkyTools would announce “Slewing telescope!” (in its
sexy British-accented female voice), and we’d go to the object. That was all
there was to it.
 |
| SkyTools 3 with "always on top" CPWI hand control. |
Summing up? I am not feeling particularly charitable toward
Celestron at the moment—you will find out why next week—but regarding this (free)
software, I gotta say they done good. It is not perfect, but it
certainly workable. Most of the improvements that are needed concern the star
map (for example, why no constellation labels?). I do understand most of the
program’s development, which has been slow, has had to be concerned with
getting alignment and connectivity issues resolved. Anyhoo, now they need to
spiff up the star map. Also, a little more gamepad functionality would be nice. As is, all you can do is move the telescope (fast or slow) with it.
At any rate, I am convinced CPWI and SkyTools 3 (or Deep Sky Planner, which I'll check out with CPWI next time) are what I will use initially for the New Herschel Project—when I use the
Celestron mount, anyway. CPWI has got a feel a lot like good, old NexRemote.
Enough of a feel that I’m not missing my favorite piece of astronomy software quite
as much as I was, muchachos.
Sunday, June 14, 2020
#561: Fifteen Years After the Honeymoon or "The New Herschel Project: 1 Down, 399 to Go"
My little girlfriend has, on balance, always been a Good Telescope.
I’ll be the first to say she can be a slightly neurotic handful like her
namesake, but she usually cooperates with your old Uncle. Charity has starred
in more than a few AstroBlog articles, and if you’d like to learn more about
her, click here, here, and here. But the above pretty much sums up our
relationship over the years.
Anyhow, it had been a while since I’d even thought much
about the 5-inch Maksutov Cassegrain. But seeing as how I was looking around for
something to do astronomy-wise with the New Herschel Project stopped in
its tracks by clouds, I thought I’d get Charity out. I’d need to replace her
battery, and would do any other maintenance she required. “Battery?” Yes,
Charity is one of the last of the original breed of ETXes, the non-Ningbo Sunny
ETXes if’n you know what I mean. She’s a PE, and she has an LNT.
“Wut?” The PE (Premier Edition) ETXes were different from
earlier models in that they featured pretty—some would say garish—silk screened
tubes and the aforementioned LNT finders. That stands for “Level North
Technology.” A PE was like a GPS scope without the GPS. All you had to do was
set the scope in a simple home position and turn it on. Charity and her sisters
would then do a little dance, finding north and level, and would head to the
first of two alignment stars, which you'd center. That was it. For it to be practical, of course,
you had to have a real time clock battery to keep time/date current when the
ETX was powered off.
 |
| The Girl Still has Her Good Looks |
Meade soon reworked the LNT finder, adding an easy (or at least easier) to access
battery compartment and a lens for the red dot finder part of the LNT that would be
less likely to be accidentally snapped off. Charity, however, is an original. Nevertheless, I’ve managed to keep Charity’s finder lens
intact and battery changed out these 15 years.
At any rate, I recalled replacing Charity’s RTC battery required
disassembling the LNT finder, unscrewing a pair of bolts (the finder alignment
bolts), and removing two associated springs, one of which is
insanely difficult to replace when you are done. Naturally, these springs want
nothing better than to fly off and hide on the floor. But maybe I wouldn’t have to do anything about the
2032. Maybe after “just” a couple of years of disuse, the battery would still
be good. I was doubtful, however, and hunted up one of the button cells in the kitchen
junk drawer where such things reside.
I pulled Charity from her case. Despite the passage of all
the long years, she’s maintained her girlish good looks. I’ve always tried to
take good care of my friend; she’s deserved that in thanks for the years of joy
she’s brought me. But would she wake up when I turned her o-n/o-f-f switch to o-n?
After who knew how many trips around the Sun?
 |
| That big lens just begs to be snapped off. |
So, there’d have to be a battery swap. I still have
Charity’s manual, of course, and reviewed the instructions on that task. OK, remove
the top adjustment bolt. Check. Remove the side adjustment bolt. Check. Gently
lift the top of the LNT housing (there’s a wire connecting top to bottom).
Check. Don’t lose the two springs associated with the bolts you just removed.
Well, the horizontal spring was no problem, but, as I had feared, the vertical,
smaller spring went flying to the floor of Unk’s (radio) shack. He spent the
next 15-minutes crawling around on said floor with a Maglite before turning up the
frickin-frackin thing.
“Well, alrighty then,” Unk said (actually he said
some colorful words in the course of locating the spring and replacing it
during reassembly). Next step was removing and replacing the button cell itself, which
was no problem, it being held in the typical spring-type battery holder. What was
a problem was reassembling the LNT. Lining up the vertical spring, passing the
bolt through it, and tightening the bolt was not difficult; the other bolt and
spring were where the problem lay and has always lain.
Alas, Meade’s instructions for replacing the horizontal spring were insane: “Tighten the vertical bolt until it is firm.” If you do that, there is very little space between the side of the bottom half of the LNT and the side of the top. You have to squeeze the spring between those sides, aligning it with the holes, and inserting and threading-in the horizonal bolt. It was clear that would never work. Not in a million years. What did work was threading the vertical bolt in just a few threads. That left enough space between bottom side and the top side for me to squeeze the spring into place. I managed to use a solder tool to nudge it around to get the holes lined up, and got that hellish bolt screwed in.
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| Surgery begun... |
It turned out I’d have to wait a while before I could even
get the girl into the backyard. We had the perfect storm from an observer’s
point of view: waxing moon, cloudy skies night after night, and, finally,
Tropical Storm Cristóbal hit the coast dumping torrential rain on Unk’s vaunted
backyard.
Anyhow, last Thursday dawned to drier and slightly cooler
weather, which is common in the wake of a tropical storm. It looked so nice,
almost fall-like, that I began to wonder if I should squander the night on “just”
a 5-inch MCT and eyepieces. Alas, as the day wore on, those darned old white,
fluffy things began to scud across the sky. I could scarcely believe it.
Actually, that’s wrong. The way the weather’s been the last couple of years,
that’s exactly what I have come to expect. I decided to stick with
Charity and delay placing even her in the backyard until close to sundown.
And…the clouds just kept pouring in, flowing from (strangely for
here) northeast to southwest. I had little hope, but at about 9 pm clouds had
skittered off to the extent I thought I might get something done. The
sky was still hazy, though, very hazy. While I could make out the
Dipper/Plough, only the two “end” bowl stars of Ursa Minor were apparent.
Whatever. At least I’d get the Calibrate Sensors business completed.
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| This is how the sky looked--until Sundown. |
Next up, I figured I’d better do some Drive Training, the purpose of which is to let the ETX computer know the magnitude of backlash in the mount's gears. That is vital for good goto pointing. After years of
experience, what I’ve determined is it’s better, for some
reason, to use a terrestrial object like a distant streetlight than a star. You’d
think Polaris would be just the thing, but it doesn’t seem to be. Unfortunately, there's not a good terrestrial target visible from my backyard, so I just used Polaris, which worked OK.
As with Calibrate Sensors, there’s not much to Drive Training. The
Autostar tells you to center your target, you do that and press “Enter,” it slews
away from target target and tells you to re-center it (the Autostar even shows
you which direction key to mash) and you do that and press Enter again. Repeat the procedure for both azimuth and
altitude and you are done. In my experience, drive training needs to be
accomplished periodically. So, when Charity begins missing targets, I immediately do a
quick re-train.
Note, as with some other goto systems, certain targets are just hard for Charity's Autostar--mostly those directly or near directly overhead. Because of the construction of the ETX's fork, it's hard to access the focus knob when the scope is pointed near zenith, anyway. So, all things considered, as with big Dobs, it's best just to avoid Dobson's Hole with an ETX.
Note, as with some other goto systems, certain targets are just hard for Charity's Autostar--mostly those directly or near directly overhead. Because of the construction of the ETX's fork, it's hard to access the focus knob when the scope is pointed near zenith, anyway. So, all things considered, as with big Dobs, it's best just to avoid Dobson's Hole with an ETX.
The sky really was looking yucky now. Not so much cloudy
anymore as just very hazy. However, I thought if I could get an object or two in the
can, so to speak, that would put me ahead of the game. I also wanted to see if
Charity was still her old self after so long a layoff.
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| In her salad days. |
On this night? Not so much. Messier 3 looked OK—at 150x a
fair number of stars were resolved around its periphery—but just OK. Not even
really “fair.” “Well, let’s knock off one Herschel 400 object, anyhow.
M82 oughta show something.”
Indeed, Ursa Major’s Cigar Galaxy did show something;
just not much. When Charity stopped slewing and the weasels-with-tuberculosis
sounds that accompany that stopped, I wondered if she’s missed the Cigar.
However, a little bit of staring and reducing power to 75x showed a filmy something
centered in the field. A little more looking with averted vision turned up the
galaxy. I could cross M82 off the list, but that’s all I could do. There were
no dark lanes visible, and even the basic shape of this “disturbed” galaxy came
and went.
Also, the bugs were biting. When I’d masked up and visited
Publix the previous Tuesday, they didn’t have any of the replacement candles
and repellent pads for the Off mosquito lantern I use to keep the biters at bay (much less Thermacell refills). So, I thought the best course was to throw the big
switch, cover Miss Valentine, and perhaps devote one more night to her.
Friday was supposed to be better, but, like Thursday, while it started out clear and crisp and beautiful, as soon as darkness came the sky
flooded with clouds. So that was that. I disassembled Miss Valentine and returned her
to her case--I hope for a shorter stay than last time. I didn’t feel like I could devote any more of our increasingly few
observing hours to my ETX girlfriend no matter how much I love her. Next up
will be my Edge 800 and Mallincam and we’ll see if we can really knock off some
New Herschel objects.
Nota Bene:
Friends, while Charity was mostly in good shape after all that downtime, I noticed the
insulation on her Autostar hand control cable is gone in several places. I’ll
definitely need to replace it before our next outing. Unfortunately, a bit of
googling hasn’t turned up a source for a good replacement. Can any of y’all
help?
Book Plug Department
I’m gobsmacked at a new book that’s just crossed my desk, Thomas
Fowler’s The View Through Your Telescope. It is subtitled And How to
Make it Better. And that is just what it can do, muchachos. I haven’t had time to
really dig into it yet, but I can tell you already this is just the sort of
book a lot of us, and especially imagers (but not just imagers), have been
looking for. It is somewhat technical in places, but that’s also just what many
of us have been looking for. Go get it, muchachos. Expect a full review soon.
