Hi Steve,

Hello freom Greece. Well the summer nights are now getting longer. Enjoy them while they’re here. For you, the frost of winter will come all too soon. BTW, Southern Comfort is great to restore the circulation after a cold night out under the stars.

Here in Greece, I’m muddling through and have become thoroughly disenchanted with SkyWatcher. They have a great design and excellent firmware but choose to save a few pennies using inappropraite materials that cause a lot of failures. e.g. mount power cord dissconnects at will, even worse the hand controller also disconnects when every it whishes. When its working the damned thing is 100% right on and keeps on target for at least an hour but that’s when it working. Hopefully all the modifications I’ve made to theSkywatcher mount and tripod will do the trick or the Skywatcher will be an expensive 200 euro mistake They’re so bad that they knocked Meade off my Shit List. I do hope their scopes are better built.

For what its worth. One thing I’ve found is that the SkyWatcher SynScan Alt/Az GOTO Mount and Tripod marketed in Europe is different from that marketed to the rest of the world. The European Version has a lot less features but does have 40,000 more objects in its data base. The world version has only 4 thousand objects, but can work in the equatidoral mode, correct for cone error, has many more alighment optins, a time chip in the handset, etc.

The portability issue with my iOptron NOVA/CG5 GOTO mount is looking like less of an issue each night. I now have it assembled and ready to go with my C6S back on and hopefully will be able to take it out tonight or tomorrow night. I say hopefully as it seems unexpected guests drop in each night and …. Now if I can only remember how to set it up properly.

1. vertical axis of the tripod orthogonal to the plane of the earth (carpenter level not the innacurate CG5 bubble level)
2. mount and scope polar aligned (north star centered in mount and scope; close enough).
3 three star align (high power eyepiece).
4. fully charged power pack

Leave anything out?

Joe

I finally got to test the Mini Tower autoguiding feature last night. I set up at the Heart O’ Texas Observatory just north of Abilene, Texas, owned by Bob Terrell. It was 103F, 18% humidity, and gusts of wind between 3-12 mph and a clear sky. Not bad for West Texas in July.

I did a couple of polar alignments and settled for 17.6′ high and 23.4′ West. Not a very good alignment, but I was more interested in seeing the autoguider in action. I started imaging M31 around 10:30PM. I set the Autoguide selection to 0.4 sidereal in the 8401 handset. My autoguider is an Orion Starshoot DSCI II, and it is not supported by PHD Guiding, so I had to use the Maxim DL Essentials software that came with the camera. The interface between the camera and mount was the LX200 protocol in the software drop-down box. I had already spent about three days fooling with the GotoNova ASCOM driver, which runs PC planetarium programs, but is clueless about pulse guiding.

The DSCI had no trouble finding a guide star. It smoothly ran the calibration sequence. Then the frustration began! I had the aggressiveness set about midway; 5 on both X & Y axis. Not good! Big pixel errors within a few seconds, and my image was jumping all over the screen. It took about 45 minutes to dial in some acceptable parameters. I ended up setting the aggressive factors to X=1, Y=1. I could get about 5 or 6 minutes of really good guiding, and then the pixel errors would get so big I would have to reset. This wasn’t “set it and forget it”. I think my problem was in the polar alignment. Wind was also a factor. I will test the same rig this weekend on my GM-8. Maybe that will shed some light on the problem.

I imaged M31 and later a widefield study of Scutum. All my exposures last night were at 120 seconds. I previously found the unguided limit around 90 seconds a few weeks ago, so this was an improvement.

M31 Andromeda Galaxy 15X120 sec exp

Scutum Widefield with M11 and Barnard 111 5X120 sec exposure

I became adept at manipulating the autoguider by 2AM. I just had to stay on top of the pixel error. I kept the errors around 0.30 to 1.25 and the stars were quite round as a result.

The moon rose and a thin cloud cover rolled in from the North, so I shut it down around 3 o’clock. I was pleased with the way it went last night. I think the Mini Tower can be a great AP platform in EQ mode with a little experience.

John Bozeman

I just used the LX200 protocol and the motors ran in AG Calibration mode. This is a serial signal on COM4, but it is running via USB to the mount. It works. Take GotoNova ASCOM completely out of the equation. I guess it is time to find a clear night and give this thing another go.

John

Steve and I have corresponded by phone and e-mail on this subject, and have come to the conclusion that the GotoNova ASCOM driver can’t handle pulse commands. It will run a PC-based planetarium program, however. The planetarium programs issue a “move and stop” command to the motors, as opposed to the pulse commands. We think the problem is in the source code. iOptron has not released the source code to third party developers, and hasn’t shown any interest in fixing it. This brings up another issue: Why does iOptron advertise Autoguiding as a feature of the 8401 controller? Why does the controller have an Autoguide menu to set guiding speed? Why does the RA motor start running when you select a guide speed?

John Bozeman

I set up a field test last night with an Orion StarShoot DSCI II looking through an ST80 piggybacked on my C8. I ran the autoguider on one laptop, and the imaging camera on another just to simplify matters if problems occurred (Yes, problems occurred, but we’ll get to that in a minute).

The USB2COM driver enables the mount to communicate with the PC. It has to be installed in order to load the GotoNova ASCOM driver by way of the USB cable to the 8401 handset. I know in the past some people were trying to run the ASCOM driver directly and it wasn’t connecting. I watched the GotoNova status box read the time, latitude & longitude, etc. when I connected it to the MT.

All was good, so far. I did a polar alignment a couple of times, and got the numbers down to single digits; 3.2 West and 7.6 lower. I felt it was close enough that the autoguider could handle it. I then slewed to M57, did a “Synch to Target” and let everything stabilize.

I fired up the guide routine in Maxim DL Essentials. It automatically selected a guide star. I then ran the Calibration routine, which is a series of five short exposures. Calibrate ideally moves the telescope down, to the right, up, and to the left, creating a “box” on the screen if it is working properly. It also tells you the position of the guide star after each iteration. The program issued the commands to move the telescope, but the mount ignored them and continued to track normally. I got an error message in Maxim stating “Guide Star moved < than 5 pixels”. Ideally it would move greater than 5 pixels during calibration.

I worked with this for about three hours, and never got it to take over motor control. The PC never displayed an error screen; it assumed the mount was working properly. I tried a lot of work-arounds to no avail. There is an “Autoguide” menu in the MT handset. This gives you the option to set guide speed at 1.0X, 0.8X, 0.6X, and 0.4X. The Maxim DL suggested I set it to no greater than 1.0X, indicating it would probably work fine at 0.8X. I tried all the settings. The speed settings had no effect on the problem.

I attempted guiding even though there was no movement in Calibration. The tracking errors in X and Y axis were displayed after each exposure, and occasionally I would see a “Moving Telescope” message flash briefly between exposures, indicating that everything was working properly. The tracking errors got greater over time, of course, as it wasn’t autoguiding.

That is where it’s at today. I am thinking about running the PEC Record routine next time out. You manually guide the star for 600 seconds, then save and run the recording to smooth out PEC errors for the rest of the night. This is a far cry from autoguiding, but it might buy some extended exposure time.

I was limited to 56 second exposures in alt/az mode due to field rotation. I can easily shoot 90 seconds unguided now with a decent polar alignment in EQ. This has made a big improvement in my AP efforts with the MT.

I must disclose that I also have a Losmandy GM-8 (non Gemini) that guides perfectly for long exposures. I have a Mr. Wizard/MacGyver syndrome that makes me want to see the MT as a viable AP platform. I just think it would be pretty cool to have a GPS-enabled grab n go mount with all the goto bells and whistles that was capable of taking great pictures!

I hope this has shed some light on the issue. I think it is time for other wedge owners interested in AP to pick up the ball and run with it awhile.

John Bozeman

My observing buddy, Joe Thompson “gifted” me with a new Orion StarShoot DSCI II last Saturday night. He purchased it several months ago, then decided to stick with his DSLR for imaging. I brought it home and have been playing with it in the house since then. PHD Guiding does not support this camera. Bummer. The Orion-provided software, Maxim DL Essentials, does have an Autoguider feature, however.

I loaded USB2COM several days ago to perform an 8401 upgrade, so my laptop can “talk” to the Mini Tower. Yesterday I fired up the camera in Maxim Autoguider, selected the GotoNova ASCOM driver on Com4, and the camera was communicating with the MT/EQ over the USB cable connected to the handset! It read the LAT/LON, time, etc. It appears that there is a good possibility that it will work under the stars! That brings up another issue; I haven’t perfected a suitable cloud filter yet, so everything is on HOLD until further notice. There are several wedge owners now. Anyone interested in using your MT for guided AP can take this information and give it a try if your skies are willing! I am socked in with clouds and rain for the rest of the week, but will test it at first opportunity. I feel certain this will work in PHD Guiding with a compatible camera.

BTW, you can determine your COM port by opening Control Panel, System, Device Manager, Ports.

John Bozeman

Through some miracle it actually cleared up tonight! Stephen and I got back from Milford, NH and immediately set up the TAL-2 and the 4″ f/15 Jaegers. I did my usual eyeball polar alignment which, of course, was darned near spot on! LOL I moved the tube rings from my Vixen saddle plate to the client’s A-P plate and set about with the testing.

TAL-2 first light after total overhaul

The first thing that we noticed that there was a LOT of “heat lightning” being generated. Even so, the sky was remarkably clear. We started with our favorite summer object, M-57. We centered it in the 40mm EP and then started bumping up the power. What we noticed was that the mount was tracking very well. The old style AC clock drive was working perfectly. Oh, at first it appeared to be not working because M-57 was heading out of the FOV and the drive corrector was making it worse! I then realized that I had wired the motor and switch just as was done with the original motor. I quickly discovered that the switch needs to be pushed DOWN for the northern hemisphere, not up, as I had done initially! I could reverse the switch, but, I really don’t want to take it apart again or risk scratching up the nice new paint job.

We went to a few other objects, such as M-13, M-97, etc. However, we went back to M-57 because it was a really good object for testing the tracking. We kept bumping up the power until we were over 300x. At this point it took up about 35% of the FOV. It was also getting harder to focus because the old rack and pinion focuser on the Jaegers is a bit tired and wasn’t really well made in the first place.

We were quite surprised at how much detail was visible when we used averted vision. So, I decided to use the old trick of blocking out as much stray light as possible with my hands and a towel. It worked! Eventually, the central star did reveal itself. I asked Stephen to look and tell me what he saw and he asked if I had noticed that the central star was popping in and out of visibility. I then told him that’s why I had him look at it for an extended length of time. We compared notes and found that we were in total agreement. Indeed, the central star was visible. It was hard to see and the glimpses were fleeting, but, it was definitely there!

The total time that we tracked M-57 was right around one hour. We had to make a very minor correction after about 40 minutes. I’d say that’s a good sign that the mount is doing exactly what it was designed to do. Yes, the long tube did jiggle when focusing. However, once we took our hands away it damped out the vibrations in about 1 to 1-1/2 seconds. That’s pretty darned good for a mount that was originally designed for a 6″ f/8 reflector for visual use only! Damn! Those Russians made some good stuff!

We have added an old Accu-Trak drive corrector to the system. It definitely helped. The corrections were extremely slow and not of great value. Remember, these drive correctors were designed to be used at high power with a guide scope while the main scope was being used for imaging with photographic film! Film was not as sensitive as CCDs and the controls did not need to respond as quickly.

What is of great value is the LED that is on the main box. If you have the controller set incorrectly, the LED flashes. As you turn the dial on the hand controller you can adjust the LED so that it stops flashing. When it is a steady red then you’ve set the speed to exactly the rate that is selected on the main box. It has Lunar, Solar and Sidereal rates. Each one will have the LED flash until the control dial is set to produce exactly that rate by making the LED go steady. That is a brilliant little piece of equipment! The nice thing is that if a 12 VDC DEC motor were to be added it would control that, too. It operates from 120 VAC house current, normally. However, it will also work from a car battery if the supplied cable is used. Just clip the leads to the battery and plug it into the back of the AccuTrak. It now acts as a voltage inverter and powers the 120 VAC clock drive!! Everything else is the same. Very cool indeed!

I must admit that the f/15 OTA may have had just a bit too much moment arm for this mount. It was necessary to set the RA slip clutch to where it was pretty tight. I may be able to loosen it just a bit now that I know exactly how it performs. The DEC axle was easy because it has an actual clamp that allows you to take the gripping tension off of the DEC axle. If tightened just a bit it, too, acts as a slip clutch. The built in tangent arm DEC corrector was smooth and capable of very fine adjustments. It performs much better than the one on my DS-16! The only down side is that with such a long tube it is out of reach! That’s were Stephen and I worked together. He’d turn the crank/knob and I’d call which way and when to stop. We reversed the rolls several times and the system worked quite well. The RA knobs were much easier to reach and did quite well even though they were trying to move almost 40 pounds of OTA, saddle plates, dovetails, CWs and shaft!

Yes, the mount has definitely passed the test with flying colors. As long as it is used for visual work and/or a shorter or less massive OTA then it should perform quite well. The 4″ f/15 did much better than I expected so this should say a lot about this mount. It is possible that with a shorter or lighter instrument that it could do AP work. However, if this were to be considered it would be absolutely mandatory to mount some kind of motor control on the DEC axle since turning the knob by hand would introduce vibrations.

That’s tonight’s amazing story! It was a great relief to be able to see the stars tonight. The TAL-2 was a pleasure to use and seeing the central star in M-57 was the icing on the cake.

CS

Steve

Dr. Kevin McKone of Copiah-Lincoln Community College invited me to visit his robotics and space campers to hold a solar observing session last week on June 17th. As in my earlier post on solar observing, I set up the Coronado 60-mm scope on the Mini Tower “in parallel” with my old Ad Astra Mak, which was equipped with a full aperture solar filter. This gave two views of the Sun, h-alpha with the Coronado and white light with the Mak. You may be aware that the Sun is eerily quiet these days, so the white light view was a bust. We did see a nice loop prominence in h-alpha.

Robotics and Space Camp students

I set up the Mini Tower by leveling it and aligning North-South with compass and eyeball. I then slewed to the Sun and tweaked the alignment with “synch to target.” After we looked at the Sun we slewed to the Moon, and removed the filter from the Maksutov to have a look. A further tweaking with “synch to target” was necessary, but after that we were able to slew to Venus successfully. Venus was clearly visible on this bright–and very hot–Mississippi day.

Here Dr. Kevin McKone gets a look at Venus. In the picture you can see how the Coronado solar scope and the little Maksutov are mounted on the Mini Tower. We had finished observing the Sun, so I’ve capped the Coronado scope and removed the solar filter from the Mak.

The two-scope capability of the Mini-Tower is obviously great for this type of solar observing, but I was also impressed that the Mini put Venus smack in the middle of the FOV after an alignment that consisted of “synch to target” iterations on two ‘wandering stars.’ The Sun and the Moon are not fixed on the Celestial Sphere, so for an alignment utilizing them (or the planets) the Mini Tower must be doing a very accurate computation for their celestial coordinates.

This time of year you get your clear skies when you can. A window of opportunity opened up yesterday afternoon, and it looked like I might be able to take a few pictures. I drove out to Bob Terrell’s Heart O’ Texas Observatory around 7PM and got everything set up before dark. Polar aligning the MT on the wedge is a Dark Art. I settled for 43.6′ Lower and 7.3′ West as my polar alignment. (It could be MUCH better, but time is money!). I got good slews to my targets. There was a little breeze early on. I had the MT tripod fully extended (so I didn’t have to stand on my head to align), and the breeze limited me to about 90 seconds exposure. It got much better later in the evening. I shot 20 frames of NGC7000, the North American Nebula, first. I discarded 14 frames this morning due to the breeze. Stacked the 6 good subs in Nebulosity2, processed with Neb2, PixInsight LE, and Photoshop 7.

NGC7000 North American Nebula

20 subs @90 seconds equals 30 minutes on a target. The wind went to nothing at the end of the sequence.I slewed to NGC6960, The Veil Nebula (West). Again, I shot 20 subs. I was getting sleepy and had only just begun! I started pining for my pop-up camper sitting idle at home. Sagittarius was up and I was fading fast. I reluctantly shut down and packed everything up. Got home around 2AM.

I had better luck with the Veil. I only discarded 4 subs! I stacked the 16 good ones and came up with this….

Last night was my first AP field test of the wedge/EQ combination. I was very pleased with the results, and think I can improve my imaging as I pick up the learning curve. I just might move that camper to the site today!

John Bozeman

Remember that song from Credence Clearwater Revival? It won’t stop playing in my head! It’s been over two weeks, maybe three, since we’ve had a night of observing. OK. There was a 30 minute sucker hole one night were I was able to test a small scope onto which I had just mounted a two speed focuser for a client. I managed to get about 10 minutes of star time and then the clouds rolled in and opened up like Niagara Falls, AGAIN!

Ooops! Error! Error! Error! Last Tuesday night was clear for a while. However, I was out of town and the fog and dew were horrible!

Regardless, this weather is driving me, as well as most astronomers, nuts! The weather prediction for the next TWO WEEKS is more of the same. I think I’m growing webbing between my toes and pretty soon expect to see gill slits appearing on the side of my neck!

At least I no longer have any excuses to avoid finishing some projects that have been here for way too long. I have a TAL-2 mount that has been getting a complete overhaul and upgrade. Originally, the motor and controller had fried so it was placed up on a shelf. At some point, gravity decide to have fun with it and it fell to the floor. I knew that we could repair it and at the same time, make it better.

Finding a replacement motor for that Russian GEM was a nightmare. It took 12 WEEKS to find and purchase the motor! I also had to make up a new DEC shaft that was much larger in diameter than the original. This DEC shaft will allow the user to mount Losmandy counterweights on the TAL-2 instead of the tiny little things that came from the factory. The fly in the ointment was that my old lathe couldn’t handle the length shaft required. It also could not cut the very fine metric 20 mm x 1.0 mm threads. I finally purchased a new/used lathe and made up the shaft complete with toe saver. I got around the threading issue by ordering a set of custom made taps for the correct thread. They worked perfectly.

The owner decided that he wanted to have the mount handle a set of Losmandy tube rings and dovetail. It was easy to adapt those to the mount. He also wanted a speed/direction control for it. I located one and have already run the mount on the bench. Everything seems to be working very well. I only need to finish making up the pointing index for the DEC setting circle and the project is finished!

The TAL-2 was imported, briefly, by a company that no longer handles the product line. That’s too bad because these things are really very well made. They remind me of the RV6 GEM mounts that are sitting in my garage. However, they are substantially more rugged. These things are built, quite literally, like a Russian tank! If these could ever be offered with a state-of-the-art GOTO system they would most likely make a very good impression. Everything about these mounts is well thought out. They are made simple and rugged and obviously made to stand up to very harsh conditions. I’ve not seen ANY American mount that is this well built and I can guarantee that the Asian companies will never build anything like this.

All in all, this has been a really fun project. The few hurdles that needed to be cleared were very tall, but, not impossible. They did cause the project to take an insanely long time. I should have had this finished in only a few weeks. Because of the odd threads and machining limits as well as having to take care of the daily stuff, it has taken a number of months. That makes me very unhappy. However, the end result is well worth the time. I hope that the client is as happy with the results as am I.

So, what has this all got to do with the rain? I CAN’T TEST THE MOUNT UNTIL IT CLEARS UP!!! My policy is that nothing leaves here until we have thoroughly tested it and that includes this Russian TAL-2 GEM! ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!

Oh great, now the tune in my head just changed! It’s now playing “Rain Drops Keep Falling on my Head” by BJ Thomas!! I HATE THAT SONG!!!! DOUBLE ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH! I’m going to go find one of my Beach Boys CDs and crank it up BEFORE I go completely out of my mind!

Clear skies (whatever those are) to all,

Steve