Sunday, February 16, 2014
Chasing Supernovae with Uncle Rod, the Atlas, and a TPI Spreader
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| Thomas Aquinas, "Tommy," and his telescope (so he says). |
In some ways, today’s tripods are purty good. Particularly the ubiquitous Chinese 2-inch diameter steel legged jobs. Sadly, however, almost all of them have a weak link. Their spreaders are just pitiful. Small plastic or metal dealies that don’t do their job. Oh, they hold the legs apart, but they do little to help stabilize the tripod, which should be a major function of a tripod spreader.
They not
only don’t help strengthen the tripod, those that also serve as accessory trays
are way too small, and some, like Celestron’s spreaders, don’t incorporate
accessory trays into their design at all. I don’t want to put eyepieces on an
accessory tray (because of dew), but I do want a place, a shelf, for the mount
power supply, the DewBuster power supply, batteries, the DewBuster controller,
and stuff like that.
A couple of
years back, I thought salvation was at hand. Orion (Telescope and Binocular
Center) began advertising a larger accessory tray/spreader for the Synta mounts
including the EQ-6 (Atlas). It seemed a little pricey for something that looked on the cheaply made side, 50 bucks, but it resembled the big spreader (no longer available) my buddy Joe bought for his CG5
years ago. That spreader enabled his mount to handle a C11 tube far better than
I would have thought possible. I’d been on the lookout for something similar
for years, and thought I had found it. I didn't really need to improve my CG5
and VX tripods, since those mounts are light and I only put C8s or lighter
scopes on ‘em. The Atlas was another story.
With the
Atlas/EQ-6, the tripod is indeed the weak link. The mount is inherently sturdy
and capable, but the big, heavy GEM head is too much for the tripod, mainly
because the small Synta spreader doesn't do its job. Don’t get me wrong the
tripod’s stability is not crazy bad,
but it is bad enough that it doesn't allow the mount to live up to its full potential,
especially with heavier OTAs. So off to Orion went my credit card number.
Alas, I
reckon I didn't read the fine print. When the thing arrived, I found it wasn’t really a spreader. It was just a larger
accessory tray you bolted onto the original, small spreader that comes with the
Synta tripods. It did provide more room for my stuff, and that was cool, but it
did nothing to improve stability. It’s been relegated to the CG5 and VX and is
nice enough on those mounts.
After that,
I purty much gave up on the idea of strengthening the Atlas’ tripod. Oh, I
occasionally thought about fabricating something from plywood, but y'all know
how dangerous I am with a hammer and nails. And there things stood till I
got an email from Dave Yates, the owner and
head honcho of TPI, Telescope Performance Improvements. He told me he had a product that would fix all my tripod woes.
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| Unk's supernova collection |
We’ll try
out Dave’s spreader/tray shortly, but first let’s talk supernovae. I’ve long
been fascinated by those cosmic critters, giant suns or the white dwarf members
of binary systems, that pop off like firecrackers in titanic explosions,
outshining their host galaxies for a time. When I found how easy it was to image
distant supernovae with the Mallincam Xtreme, I made a little hobby of collecting
pictures of these stellar cataclysms. Or I did till the last year’s weather
shut that and almost all my other observing activities down. Thank the weather
gods that may be slowly changing
now. At least I was able to get out and snap the portrait of the recent
supernova in M82.
Supernovae
are not rare; there’s one shining in some galaxy visible with amateur scopes
and cameras almost all the time. One in a bright Messier galaxy is not as common, however,
since there are far fewer Messier galaxies than NGC galaxies, for
example. Nevertheless, we've had good
ones in M65, M101, M51, and M82 in recent times. I enjoyed the fireworks in
M82, one of the brightest and most photogenic of the Messier island universes, and
figured that would be it for a while. Imagine my surprise, then, to learn one
had gone off in magnitude 9.9 M99 in Coma Berenices while M82’s guest star was
still blazing away.
One of my main
goals when I was down in Chiefland last week was imaging the new supernova, but
as you heard last time, I didn't image pea-turkey. I didn’t see a cotton-picking thing
down south. It didn’t look like the clouds would break any time soon back home,
either. Nevertheless, we got a short interval of clear sky last Saturday
evening. Which was cool, since that coincided with the M99 supernova, SN2014L,
having brightened to around magnitude 14. Shortly after its discovery, it was
somewhat dimmer than magnitude 16, which would still have been duck soup for
the Mallincam Xtreme, but the brighter the better, right?
There was
another item on my agenda. Not long ago, I had the Atlas out to the dark
site to see if its goto might be good enough to encourage me to move the
NexStar 11’s OTA to it. It had to be precise enough to allow me to do my crazy
“hundred objects a night” video runs when I am on what Miss Dorothy calls one
of my “deep sky tears.” I was pretty sure EQMOD
could provide that precision. But I was unable to get it to work that night.
Even though
I had little doubt I could get EQMOD going, I decided I wasn’t ready to give up
the convenience of the Big Bertha’s fork mount in alt-azimuth mode. I’ll leave
her on the fork for now and seek a case that makes her easier to tote around. Nevertheless,
I wanted to get EQMOD working. I have used the Atlas and EQMOD for all my DSLR
imaging, and want to continue doing that.
Saturday
afternoon, I cabled up the laptop and the Atlas and set about troubleshooting.
What I concluded was that it was mostly a configuration problem. While I had
installed EQMOD on my new Toshiba Satellite laptop, I had never used it and had
not completely set it up. I believed there may have been a power problem
contributing to my lack of success, too, since I mistakenly used a suspect
cable instead of the good one I got from Scopestuff some time back. Anyhoo, I
was able to get EQMOD going in the dining room without a hitch.
Since I’d be
using the Atlas Saturday evening, it seemed the perfect time to get the
TPI spreader and equipment shelf out of their box and on the Atlas tripod. The
TPI stuff had arrived some time before, but my return from Chiefland had
coincided with me coming down with a nasty cold and I hadn’t felt like doing a
pea-picking thing for days.
If there’s a
criticism I can level against the TPI gear, it’s that you might feel funny
attaching an Astro-Physics/Takahashi quality piece of kit to your plebeian Synta
tripod. But that’s OK. The Atlas is really a quality mount and deserves quality
accessories and the TPI stuff sure is that. The spreader is made of lovely CNC
machined aluminum, and the accessory tray is also very beautifully made.
There’s a nice sheaf of instructions, but they are almost unnecessary.
Installation consists of bolting the tripod clamp rings to the spreader and
then clamping each of the three rings to the tripod legs. Everything is precisely
made and fastened with stainless steel hardware. I got ‘er done in about
10-minutes.
How much
would the spreader help? Only a good long session under the stars with the Atlas
would tell the tale, but when I applied torsional stress to the legs, I could
already see the tripod was sturdier. With the spreader extended (it folds to
allow you to collapse the tripod as per normal), I attached the accessory
shelf, which took all of ten seconds thanks to a nice knob-headed bolt that
fastens tray to spreader with a small clamp.
As the
afternoon grew older, it was time to load up. I could have snapped M99 with my
Meade DSI or even the ZWO camera, but the galaxy wouldn’t be high enough to
fool with until close to 10 p.m., so I packed a full load of video gear in
addition to the Atlas and my Edge 800 OTA, Mrs. Peel. While I was waiting for
the supernova, I’d do a Mallincam run, with the intention of getting some pix
for a book I am working on.
I’ve
returned to a project I started in 2009. That summer, I got plenty of deep sky video images for what I was calling
“Uncle Rod’s SCT 100,” but the pix were done with my old black and white
Stellacam and were none too pretty. While I plan to have plenty of genu-wine
CCD images (and drawings) in the book, I want video images there, too, since they
sometimes do a better job of showing what a deep sky object looks like to the
eye than a CCD picture does.
I thought
I’d get some of those pictures on this night—if I got anything. Wouldn't you
know it? As 4 p.m. came, so did clouds. Also, while I was mostly over my Bad
Cold, I wasn’t completely over it and didn't feel at the top of my game. Still,
the Weather Channel, Clear Sky Clocks, and Scope Nights were all insisting on
“clear,” so on I pushed.
As my
departure time, 4:45 p.m., approached, the clouds began to disperse: “Well,
I’ll be gull-derned. Clear Sky Clock and Scope Nights got it right for once.”
The trip west to the Possum Swamp Astronomical Society Dark Site was
uneventful. There was heavy traffic on Airport Boulevard on a Saturday
afternoon, but it would almost have been a pleasant drive if I hadn’t suddenly
realized I’d forgot a critical piece of gear.
Rut-roh. As I’d been tooling along listening
to Classic Album Rock on the Sirius XM, it came to me that I’d left my little
Orion StarShoot DVR sitting in the dining room. What to do? Without it, I
wouldn’t be able to record any of my video and would have nothing to show for
it even if I captured the supernova. On the other hand, I was now about halfway
to the site and had no desire to turn around and re-navigate the traffic that
was filling Airport Boulevard as Possum Swampers began to flock to the restaurants,
clubs, and the Mall on Saturday P.M.
What would I
do? What would I do? I’d have to
forget collecting images for the SCT 100. If I got the supernova in M99
onscreen, I could probably snap a screenshot with my iPhone. It wouldn’t be
great, but it might be OK. I’d devote the evening to testing EQMOD and the TPI
spreader. Sigh. I have learned my lesson, y’all. Running the gear load-out by a
checklist has meant I haven’t forgotten anything major for a star party trip in a
long time. I herewith pledge to start using the same checklist for my at-home
dark site runs.
At that dark
site, I was once again not surprised to be all by my lonesome—I wasn’t even
visited by the airstrip’s friendly tomcat. There was a bright Moon flying high
and most of my PSAS compadres probably didn't think it would be a very deep sky
friendly evening. In a way, it was probably good I was alone. I was P.O.ed
(“put out,” y’all; this is a family-friendly blog) about having forgotten the
DVR, and it felt like my cold was getting worse, not better. I tried to film a
little video of gear set up with my iPhone, but that was scotched by the first
of my many coughing fits. To put in succinctly, your old Unk was in a MOOD.
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| Atlas tripod ready! |
Despite
that, set up went smoothly; the TPI spreader didn't cause any heartburn at all.
Push down on the spreader to open the tripod, position the shelf, fiddle with
its clamp for five seconds, and I was done. On the tripod went the Atlas GEM
head, the counterweight, and the Edge 800 and I was done save for mounting the
camera and cabling everything up. How was I feeling when I was done? Not so hotsky. I was warm enough in a
sweater and a light nylon jacket—maybe too warm. There was little doubt in my
formerly military mind I should have stayed home and would have if’n I’d had any sense. “Oh,
well, good thing I don’t have any sense.”
With the
computer fired up, a serial cable connected between it and the Atlas, and the
Mallincam Xtreme ready to go, my next task was polar alignment. The current
SynScan HC has a built-in polar alignment routine identical to the AllStar
Polar Alignment in the company’s Celestron branded mounts’ NexStar HCs. EQMOD
goes about polar alignment differently, however.
First you
set a “polar home” position by rotating the mount in RA with the wireless game
pad that serves as EQMOD’s hand control until the marker on the polar scope
reticle where Polaris goes is on the bottom. Then, you mash a button on EQMOD
to tell it you are ready to polar align. Using the date and time in the laptop
for reference, EQMOD moves the mount in RA till the reticle is precisely
positioned. Use the altitude and azimuth adjusters to place Polaris in the
little circle on the reticle and that is it. It’s not as gee-whiz as AllStar,
but I find the polar alignments it produces to be very good indeed.
Once I had
Polaris properly positioned, I parked the Atlas to Home Position and waited for
a few more alignment stars to wink on. When there was a sufficient quantity, I
brought up Cartes du Ciel’s all-sky
display and sent the mount to three stars, syncing on each one. I picked a star
in the northeast, one in the northwest, and one in the southwest to allow EQMOD
to build a good pointing model. EQMOD seemed to be going great guns. The final
star was on the screen of the portable DVD player I use as a video display when
the slew stopped. I positioned it dead in the middle of the crosshairs I’d put
on the screen with the Mallincam software and alignment was complete.
Alrighty,
then. Target One. I clicked on Lepus’ globular cluster, M79, on Cartes’ screen,
mashed the program’s “slew to” button, and away the Atlas and Mrs. Peel went.
When the goto was done, the little glob was dang near dead center. I had
forgotten how bright having a Moon n the sky will make the background in
Mallincam images, but a little playing with gamma and gain settings reduced
this annoyance to a bearable level. With a surprisingly good-looking M79
onscreen, I thought it would be a good time to evaluate the TPI spreader’s
effectiveness.
As I was
focusing up on M79’s teeny-tiny stars, I noted a distinct absence of The Shakes in 2-second exposures. The
Atlas and a C8 are quite steady even without a TPI, but I can always generate
of star trails by tweaking focus. With the TPI in place? No Shakes. Just round
stars as I focused. OK, Mr. Smarty Pants.
Let’s see how you like this. I
fetched Mrs. Peel a good whack on her rear cell. Hated to do it, but this was
SCIENCE. The result? Amazingly, still no star trails. Folks, I don’t want to
overdo it, but if you own an Atlas, you
want the TPI spreader. It just makes a difference.
You probably
want the TPI accessory tray, too. Even if, unlike Unk, you don’t feel the need
for a place to stash stuff, I believe loading it down with your jump-start
batteries like I did on this night also adds to the steadiness of the set up.
Sorta like the old trick we used to do with too light mounts and tripods: hang
a water-filled milk jug from the tripod head.
Up to this
point, everything had gone sweet. Real
sweet. Which got me suspicious. Everything going so smooth just don’t spell
“Unk Rod observing run.” I wasn’t suspicious for long, though. After I was done with M79
things began to go south in a hurry. Oh, a trip to NGC 457, the E.T. Cluster, was a
success, but when I clicked on and slewed to M110 in the west, the scope landed
on an empty star field.
No problemo.
I’d only aligned on three stars, and EMOD allows you to align on as many as you
like, meaning go-to accuracy is never a problem. Usually, three is enough, but
if not, another star in the area of the target always fixes things. Not this
time. I still couldn’t get to M32. I also noticed the cursor on the computer screen
that indicates the scope’s position wasn’t on M32 either. What the—? As a test,
I used the joystick to place the screen cursor on M32. When I did, it
immediately showed onscreen. What the heck was going on?
OK…I headed
back east to see if the problem was evident there, too. M79 had been centered
after a go-to slew. How about M42? Missed it by several fields. “Hmm…guess I’ll
sync on Rigel.” I clicked on Rigel and mashed the slew button. The slew
started, and then abruptly stopped halfway to the star. Nothing I could do
would get the mount moving again. I threw the big switch.
What was the
fracking difficulty? Could be the serial cable. Or perhaps the EQDIR module, the
little widget plugged between that cable and the computer that translates
between RS-232 speak on the computer end and TTL speak on the mount end. It was
certainly old enough; I’d got it shortly after I purchased the mount in
ought-seven.
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The good
thing, though, was that I had a nice troubleshooting tool available, the
SynScan HC. Using it should tell me whether my problem lay with the mount or
with EQMOD. Plugged it in and after a little fumbling—the SynScan is just different enough from the NexStar
hand control to give me fits—got the basic data plugged in and began a
three-star alignment.
Which didn't start well. Even with a good polar alignment, I don’t expect the first
alignment star to be dead in the finder cross-hairs, not unless I take undue
pains with a bubble level to precisely place the Atlas in Home Position—which I
don’t do. But I don’t expect star one to be much more than a couple of degrees
off. Sirius was several times that. I centered it up, however, and continued to
star two. Or tried to. The mount came to a halt not far from Sirius.
Shortly thereafter, the HC spontaneously rebooted itself. Well, now,
what in tarnation was going on?
Didn't know what else to do other than the good old “once more with feeling.”
Was something hosed up with the Atlas’ motor control board? I was feeling awful
unhappy till I noticed something as the mount was slewing to Sirius again: the Atlas’
power light was blinking. That is an
indication of a low power condition. I knew the battery was good, so that left
the power cable or connectors. I was using a known good power cable, since I’d
suspected that as a cause of my problems the previous time out with the mount.
I killed the power, unplugged the cable and reseated it.
One last
time. This time the mount stopped about half a degree from Sirius. Star two was
closer, and star three was nearly centered in the reticle of Mrs. Peel’s Rigel
Quick Finder. No more light-blinking, either; I observed the pilot light
carefully during the slews.
I am
thinking a little strain relief for the power cable provided by some Velcro
might be all that’s needed. As the mount rotates in RA, the power cable tends
to snag on the HC connector that is adjacent to it. If that don’t get it, a
little TLC on the mount-side connector should get me going again. I will do
something about it shortly, anyhow, and hope to get Atlas back out on the field
before it’s time for this year’s M13 picture,
at least.
That was for
another night, though. On this night,
Unk’s powers were rapidly waning. I was coughing my lungs out, and was again
feeling too warm in my light jacket. Fever? Prob’ly. Should I wait another hour
for M99? “I don’t theenk so.” I had
well and truly reached my infamous I Have
Had Enough limit. I packed up as quickly as I could and boogied for Chaos
Manor South.
Back at the
Old Manse, what was left of the evening provided a more pleasant denouement.
Starting with Svengoolie. That friendly
goober of a horror host was showing King Kong versus Godzilla, which Unk first
thrilled to in the summer of ’62 during a family vacation in New Orleans (Mama
loved its nuclear war tropes; Daddy thought a nuclear war might be preferable to watching this poorly dubbed "masterpiece."). Of course, there was also that
bottle of Yell I’d brought back from Chiefland. It soothed my poor burning
throat, or at least got me to the point where I didn't much care about it.
On the face
of it, Saturday night's run had been an almost complete bust, muchachos. Didn't get the
Atlas working right, didn't see the supernova. BUT…at least I’d determined the
source of the mount’s problems. And I had had the pleasure of seeing what the
TPI spreader could do to kick my humble Atlas up a notch or three. Sipping the
beloved elixir, watching my fave giant lizard melt all them toy tanks, I
decided the evening hadn’t been such a bust after all. Amateur astronomy ain’t always
about your successes; it’s also about your failures—the ones that teach you
something, anyway.
Nota Bene:
I’d been told famous amateur astrophotographer Evered Kreimer had died at age 93. Luckily, that turned out not to be so. Sadly, however, we definitely lost another astronomy giant recently, Jean Texereau, 95, a master optician who figured and refigured countless observatory telescopes. What makes him famous among amateurs, however, is his 1951 book, How to Make a Telescope. If you've had even the briefest of flirtations with ATMing, you've heard of it.
Comments:
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Two entertaining posts right in a row!
"Umbrellas? We don't need no stinkin' umbrellas!" Be careful out there, Mister.
"Umbrellas? We don't need no stinkin' umbrellas!" Be careful out there, Mister.
You were saying the CG5/VX doesn't really need this spreader. However, from your report on the Atlas/EQ6 much increased stability and (if I'm not mistaken that the CG5 tripod is the same as the EQ6?) would this spreader give enough increased stability with the CG5 to make it worthwhile?
Don
Don
# posted by 
: 10:32 AM
: 10:32 AM
I'm not saying it won't help...it will...especially with heavier OTAs. If you are going to put a C11 on your CG5, the TPI can make all the difference in the world. What I meant was that _for me_ who doesn't put anything larger than a C8 on the VX/CG5, the spreader wouldn't be as helpful as it is with the Atlas. The thing with the Atlas is that even if you just put a C8 on it, the weight of the EQ head itself is a lot for the tripod to handle. ;-)
Thanks, Unk.
I only use a C8 myself on the CG5, so I'll save tne dough for a second hand control - just in case one of them bites the (star)-dust.
I had the late 70's C8 on the original tripod and wedge and it was quite shaky at high powers. Putting it on the CG5 mount was a good move because this combo is much less shaky even at higher powers. PLUS, the goto is very nice for an ancient one such as me!
Don
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I only use a C8 myself on the CG5, so I'll save tne dough for a second hand control - just in case one of them bites the (star)-dust.
I had the late 70's C8 on the original tripod and wedge and it was quite shaky at high powers. Putting it on the CG5 mount was a good move because this combo is much less shaky even at higher powers. PLUS, the goto is very nice for an ancient one such as me!
Don
# posted by : 12:20 PM
: 12:20 PM << Home
