TRO Blog

The Great Nightscape Caper

The Celestron NIghtscape Color CCD camera.
    A friend got so disgusted with his Celestron Nightscape Camera and Celestron Tech Support that he sent me the camera and said good riddance! After emailing (no response) and finally calling, I found out Celestron no longer supports this camera so I began to troubleshoot. The issue was bright squiggly lines across all the images, plus the cooling fan no longer worked.
After taking the camera apart a couple of times it appeared that the fan wire had chaffed against the heat-sink and was shorting out. Everything worked normally if you disconnected the fan wire. So I have ordered another fan on Ebay and will try hooking it up as it originally was. If that doesn’t work then I will most likely rig up an external power supply to run it. I have found that using an adjustable power supply (Like the ones you can get at Walmart or other stores of it’s type with settings up to 12 volts) allow you better cooling control than reconnecting it to the 2 pin power supply on the bottom board. The 2 pin board only allows 3 speeds. With an adjustable supply you can have up 5 or 6. This was done this with a SBIG ST-7E fan and it worked very well until I got the right replacement fan.
    These cameras are well engineered but use cheap parts for the fans, ports and connectors. Many problems listed online about Nightscapes include issues with the poor USB or Power connectors. The fan wire goes through a hot, sharp edged, heat-sink, so shorting out is not a big surprise. Just moving the camera around would could eventually lead to cutting the insulation. If I reconnect the fan to the internal power supply I will cover the part that goes through the heatsink with shrink tubing or another type of insulator which should have been done at the factory.
    I am hoping to get a chance to try it out without using cooling as soon as weather and schedule cooperate. The trick of using it without cooling is to shoot darks at around the same temperature that you shoot the images and then subtract them. This will alleviate most of the dark current issues caused by heat. The AstroFX software provided free is supposed to do this quite well.
    That also brings up another issue. When I called Tech support the only useful advice I got was to use the latest ASCOM driver. This is not the one you find when you go to the generic Celestron support page. You have to put in a Google search “Celestron Nightscape ASCOM driver download” and that will take you to their info page on the camera. Under Manuals and software you will find the latest driver! The other driver that comes with the AstroFX software does not work on Maxim DL5. After disconnecting the fan, re-installing the separate driver and setting it up on Maxim, it worked fine. So if you are having an issue try re-installing the ASCOM driver. The tech support guy also said to use high a quality USB cable. Kind of think that is somewhat intuitive!
    Though I typically do Citizen Science type images it is fun to take some color images from time to time and this camera works pretty well for that sort of thing. There are thousands of colorful images online taken with this camera. Hopefully I can get this thing back on it’s feet again!
The image is a dark that was taken without cooling in a 75 degree room. Contrast this to the one above. Compared to some of my other cameras it is fairly good performance even without cooling. “

The Strange Tale of Barnard’s Star

The high proper motion star of V2500 Ophiuchus or Barnard’s Star. Image taken with Temple 28 in May of 2018.

In today’s quest for dark matter, black holes and active galactic nuclei, small dwarf stars tend to get overlooked. The fact that small amateur telescopes can image a star seem to indicate there is little of interest remaining to the professional for study. Being able to study a star with a small aperture also does not lend itself to procuring today’s cutting edge equipment for sexy science. Since stars were extensively studied near the turn of the 20th century many scientists feel it is time to move on to the next great mystery, whatever that might be. In my warped thinking this seems to be a good place to start to look for something interesting. Especially with the sophisticated equipment available today.

The great observer E.E. Barnard discovered the high proper motion of V2500 Oph in 1916 after examining photographic plates from 1894 and 1916. At the time Barnard was a professor at the University of Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay Wisconsin. Not only was he a very skilled astro-photographer but was also a very seasoned visual astronomer. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s a good astronomer had to be good at the old visual/sketching observing as well as pushing the envelope with photographic observing.

Barnard’s Star is a M5 star. This means it is a cool red dwarf star and is easy to observe with a small telescope since it is only 6 light years away. A high proper motion star is one that seems to be moving very rapidly across the night sky. Since it is close and has a rapid velocity it moves 10.29″ across the sky every year. You can see how it has moved in the above image taken with Temple 28. Barnard’s Star is moving at the rate of 103 miles per second. This means that in 351 years this star will move 1 degree in the sky. Compared to other stars this is a Porsche among snails. There are other objects that are faster but none of them as close, so it’s velocity is readily noticed here on earth!

This high proper motion as well as it’s relative ease of imaging caused a great deal of controversy. Dr. Peter Van De Kamp an astronomer at Swarthmore College’s Sproul Observatory. Dr. Van De Kamp used the 24″ refractor to observe Barnard’s Star from 1937 until the early 1970’s. He found a “wobble” in the proper motion of the star that led him to conclude that the star had a large planet orbiting. Until his death in 1992 he tenaciously held onto the idea that he was the first exo-planet discoverer.

In 1973 astronomers George Gatewood of the Allegheny Observatory and Heinrich Eichhorn of the University of Florida, using data obtained with improved equipment on the 30-inch Thaw Refracting telescope, did not detect any planets but instead detected a change in the color-dependent image scale of the images obtained from the 24-inch refractor telescope at the Sproul Observatory used by Van de Kamp in his study. Astronomer John L. Hershey found that this anomaly apparently occurred each time the objective lens was removed, cleaned, and replaced. Hundreds more stars showed “wobbles” like Barnard’s Star’s when photographs before and after cleaning were compared – a virtual impossibility.

Since then there have been numerous attempts using modern techniques to discover exo-planets around Barnard’s Star without avail. Since this star is only 6 light years away finding a planet would be a boon for study. It is much easier to study a planetary system 6 light years away compared to one 60 light year’s away. The Red Dots (https://reddots.space/photometry-log-4-end-of-campaign/) has imaged Barnard’s star repeatedly looking for any kind of signal change that would signify a planetary transit. Other than the obvious that the M class star is very slightly variable (4%), no eureka moment can be found!

In one long time series ( 60 second exposure) of Barnard’s star from Temple 28, the star exhibited a really strange light curve. Turns out it was over exposed. It was way over exposed, which is a common error of those of us that tend to image much fainter stars than Barnard’s. Doing another long time series (15 second exposure) yielded similar variability to what the Red Dots Campaign found. My cadence for the images is pretty slow since it takes around 70 seconds to upload an image to the computer. Therefore it is hard to see the shape of the actual light curve. With my equipment all that I can really tell is that it is a micro variable that varies around  4%.

Next observing season I hope to image with the AR102 (Temple 10) and do a 20 second cadence instead of an 85 second cadence. This might reveal the actual shaped light curve so the nature of the variability can be determined.

Barnard’s Star is a star that still holds interest for Citizen Scientist and Professional alike!

 

 

Stars no longer Stars?

M 57…the center star is a blue white dwarf with a surface temperature of around 100,000 Kelvin! This causes the gas ring to glow like a neon lamp!

 

Looking at Facebook Telescope Addict page you notice a trend in amateur astronomy. There are hundreds of terrific pictures of planets, galaxies and nebula, but very few images or comments on stars! Up until the 1950’s much of astronomical efforts had to do with stars, with a few notable exceptions. How hot they are, their precise positions, distance, color and composition led the thousands of scientific papers that poured from universities all over the country.  Recently the Gaia data releases have brought some focus back to stars but it is just a small blip on some professional astronomers radar.

For those of us that started early in life to look through telescopes, we spent hours looking at the stars and never could get enough. Double stars, colored stars and groups of stars were all terrific targets for small kids with small scopes. The joy of just looking at the stars took us far. In our current day, quality cameras and equipment have moved us to imaging really cool nebular stuff and away from stars. These nebular objects were hard to photograph back in the days of film even with large telescopes. (See my comparison of the 200″ Palomar scope and an 8″ reflector here…  http://templeresearchobservatory.com/palomar-vs-tro//). Virtually every professional observatory during that time had major studies of the stars going on. Where has the interest in the stars gone? Why don’t more amateurs and professionals alike spend time on these objects?

The common perception is that we know just about everything that we need to know about stars. Wow is that a misconception! In the fall of 2010 while imaging M 57 or the “Ring Nebula” with a 6″ refractor, I found myself wondering if the Blue White Dwarf star that forms the heart of the nebula was variable. As a freshman in college I remember looking through the 24″ refractor at Lowell Observatory after the public session. This was back  when I was young, good looking, a college running back at a DIAA college and the telescope operator was a pretty coed! After looking at a few pretty objects the operator turned to M 57 in Lyra. Upon putting my eye to the scope a small purple star floating in a green ring of gas popped out and hit me in the face! It was beautiful! This is probably the time when Stars became Stars to me!

Though the behavior of white dwarfs was well known in some circles, few professionals or amateurs that I talked with had a clue whether it was variable. Burnham’s guide said it was variable by 1 magnitude and several catalogs listed it as variable but no one really knew. After contacting every professional astronomer I knew (and some I didn’t know) the common answer was “I don’t think so but why does it matter?” Arne Hendon of the AAVSO, Arlo Landolt of Louisiana State University and Rik Hill of the Catalina Sky Survey were the only ones who knew about the possibility of variability and encouraged me to study it.

Turns out it is variable! In fact most white dwarfs are variable! Howard Bond and Al Grauer in the 1970’s and 1980’s found numerous dwarfs that exhibited variability. The average variability is around 2% so it is hard to detect but definitely in range of many of today’s amateur telescopes. In a short run with the AAVSONET Wright 28 Telescope (11″ Celestron SC with a SBIG ST-7E camera) the variability followed the predicted amount of 2%. Using this data and some Kepler spacecraft observations for comparison in a poster at the Kepler Science Conference in 2011, it caused some surprise from many established scientists (though they also indicated that it was not all that important!). The majority of those that took time to look at the poster had no clue that white dwarfs were variable. The common question was “What mechanism would cause that?”

Some of the best guesses are sunspots, long term flares, gravity waves or shell fusion. Bond and Grauer found that some dwarfs actually had similar light curves to pulsating variables but on minute scales, not hours or days like larger stars. Since white dwarfs are made out of degenerate matter where a teaspoon of dwarf matter weighs a ton makes this unlikely. Around many dwarfs there are thin, 20 kilometers or less, shells of hydrogen or helium gas. So if the star is pulsating it is only pulsating in that thin gas envelope.

The most interesting possibility is gravity waves and the most likely. If you saw the movie “Interstellar” you will remember the giant wave that almost destroyed the ship and people…that’s a gravity wave. Imagine a wave of 100,000 K gas, 20 kilometers or more high, racing completely around the white dwarf in minutes! If that is not a cool picture I don’t know what is!

Two really interesting books about “boring” stars are “The Hundred Greatest Stars” by James B. Kaler and “The Brightest Stars: Discovering the Universe Through the Sky’s most Brilliant Stars” by Fred Schaaf. Both of these books are on the most interesting bright stars in the sky. A case in point is the strange star of Beta Lyra also called Sheliak. This is an easily seen naked eye star in Lyra. It is often used to help find M 57 but deserves a good look from time to time on your way to the Ring. The main star is a Blue Class B giant star with a Class B dwarf star 30 solar diameters away from it.  They are so close together that gas is being sucked into the smaller dwarf star. Some of the mass flowing from the larger star to the smaller is lost to space and creating a tail behind the pair! Both of these books are filled with really interesting facts and stories about these brighter stars. Definitely worth a look in the book and in the sky as well!

So are the stars no longer Stars? Don’t think so! In fact with the increasing sophistication of equipment, smaller and smaller telescopes can turn out professional top quality data. As professional astronomy gear gets more and more expensive, it is falling to amateurs to continue much of the work that the observatories and universities used to do. Groups like the AAVSO and BAA are still viable and provide high quality Visual/Imaging data to researchers both professional and amateur. If you have an interest in actually doing science I would encourage you to go to https://aavso.org/observing-manuals and read the visual or CCD photometry manuals. These are free and point you toward where you can use all that expensive equipment, binoculars or even naked eye,  to actually do science!

Next clear night take some time to look at and appreciate these bright jewels of the night sky. If you are an imager take some star pictures of the stars as well!  Make the Stars, stars again!

Barnard’s star showing it’s proper motion over time. Peter Van De Kamp believed he had found a planet orbiting around Barnard’s star but it turned out to be regularly scheduled maintenance on the telescope showing the wobble! Who says stars are boring!
M 13 Globular Cluster. A lot of stars here!
Close up of M 57 central star. In a large telescope (24″+) the center star is deep purple surrounded by a glowing green ring to the eye! Even more detail can be seen with an imager.

 

 

 

The Smell of Sweet Success!

Temple 28 in all of it’s Duck Tape Glory!
M 57 (The Ring Nebula in Lyra) using Temple 28, ST-8E CCD and fork mount. 30×60 second images with a Slaon g filter.
Here are 3 images from last night and a cropped enlarged one as well along with an image of the current configuration of Temple 28.  After a meeting which was abruptly ended by a house burning a block away and lots of police and firemen milling around I got home to start the scope. The ST-8E is heavy enough (3.3 pounds) that you have to have a spring on it so the Moonlite can move it into focus against gravity. Got the spring installed and thought it would be good.
 
However, the real test last night was plate solving. It worked! CCDCommander slewed to each target and Maxim DL 5 plate solved without a hitch. Not quite in the center of the frame but close. This discrepancy is probably caused by the incomplete T-Point model. I just centered 6 bright stars in 6 different parts of the sky on the CCD and that is the T-Point model. Since a good model usually has to have 30-100 or more actual plate solved points this accuracy is pretty remarkable with just 6!
 
You can see in the images that the focus went soft. Turns out the heavy cabling to the camera was causing a bind to the focuser. I attached the cables to the back of the tube assembly by a cable tie so that the tube itself will bear the weight. This eliminated the bind in the focuser and fixed a potential issue with increased drag due to cold in the winter months. Because of the scopes balance point the cables are near that pivot point, thus reducing drag caused by the lever effect.  This should also take care of the cables causing a focus shift by pulling down on the camera and straining the focuser. . Moonlite Focusers are good quality so I knew it probably wasn’t a mechanical flaw.
 
The conditions were atrocious! It was clear, but beset with high thin clouds and upper level high winds all night. Moon and bright stars had halo’s around them. The M 109 image was 50X120 seconds in Sloan g filter. This made the haze even worse but you needed the extra time to get through the thin clouds. Trade off! The Cluster is 30×60 seconds in Sloan g. M 57 really has a soft focus but still shows some detail. It is 40×60 seconds in Sloan g and it looks like the clouds cleared a bit by then.
 
 
Overall I am pleased! All of these images would have yielded a good enough signal to noise ratio to do some photometry, though I would have not attempted any really dim stars. It is supposed to cloud over with a chance of rain Saturday and Sunday but at least no snow is predicted. Will work on auto-focus next so that I can get Temple 28 up and running then turn my attention to Temple 20 (8″ LX200) and bring it up to speed!
Cropped and enlarged M 57 “Ring Nebula” with Temple 28.
M 109 with 11″ CPC, ST-8E CCD and fork mount. 40×120 second image using a Sloan g filter.
NGC 6341. 30×60 seconds Temple 28 (11″ CPC)

It Pays to Read the Directions…

 

NGC 2054 Globular Cluster. 11″ CPC and ST-8E.

 

It really does pay to read the directions! In the last blog I mentioned reading Starizona’s tutorial on balancing a fork mounted telescope. While waiting for a good night to try out the balance I found a couple of tutorials on using the all star polar alignment feature on the nextstar. Turns out I had been doing that wrong as well! You are to use 2 stars widely spaced in the sky for alignment. However, I had gotten lazy and let the computer chose the alignment stars. Plus when you edited the alignment stars the hand controller would often fail to align the mount. I think that was actually caused by the poor balance causing slippage of the clutch.

After getting the balance set I used Betelgeuse in the west and Mizar in the east as the alignment stars. Regulus was chosen for the polar alignment star. So after slewing to Regulus you then go to the polar align menu and scroll up to “mount align.” The scope then slews and recenters and you are instructed to center the star and hit sync. New instructions scroll across the screen and you hit enter and the scope will slew to where Regulus should be if it was perfectly polar aligned. Using the wedge controls center the star and you are polar aligned. I use the CCD and on screen crosshairs for accuracy and that has helped considerably. Did it twice tonight and got perfect alignment of the star on the chip both times.

Last night I got the two images above. This is the first time since I have had the scope that it all worked as it should! 3 years of dinking around with it and it is finally working as it is supposed to. Of course the M 57 run was clouded out in all but one picture. An image taken 20 minutes later was fine!

Tonight I had to pack it in early. The wind picked up to 15-20 mph and that was that. The next project is to get the plate solving function and auto focus reliable so the scope will be completely automated. Looking at the weather that looks like at least a week away!

First M 57 Capture of 2018! Celestron 11″ CPC and SBIG ST-8E CCD.

Off Balance…

Celestron 11″ CPC mounted on a Celestron Super Wedge. This picture has the lighter SBIG ST-402 CCD and 80 mm guidescope, but the scope is currently featuring an SBIG ST-8E CCD and no guide scope. The ST-8E has an internal guider. .

In confessions of an ignorant astronomer parts 1&2 I detailed the maladjusted gears, inadequate wedge and the fact that this Celestron 11″ CPC telescope just had not ever worked well. So far I have had the telescope since 2014 and it has only returned about 5 good runs and even then it did not image all night like it was supposed too. It hasn’t gotten any better this year!

So after thinking seriously about selling the thing, I finally did something desperate…read the directions! Starizona has a really good web page with lots of great tutorials. So I found one on balancing the scope on a fork mounted telescope. Duh, I had been doing it backward! You balance the scope first by loosening the DEC clutch on the fork mount, tilt it vertically, then move around an external weight until it balances correctly. Then you tilt it horizontally and re-balance the tube. On mine I had to take one further step. Loosen the RA clutch and move it side to side. I used a C clamp on the west side to balance that axis. Now you can move it side to side and up and down with both axis loosened with no issues. I had been trying for years to balance the horizontal axis first!

Old picture of the counterweight system. On the current configuration the weight is closer to the top of the tube than the bottom of the tube. Still I have found that this setup is cheap and works well.

So after 4 years of fiddling around with the drive adjustments and weights it took 5 minutes to do it right! Amazing what reading a tutorial can do! While doing some internet research some people have needed to add a weight on the top of the tube as well as adding the counterweight system to the bottom. When I added 2 large metal straps (like the one above that made the weight holder) on the top of the tube it balanced perfectly. The system for keeping those weights in place is very sophisticated…black electrical tape and a bungee cord! If it all works, like it is supposed to, then it will be time to do something more permanent.

So how does it work? I don’t know! It is clouding up…again! When I get a chance to try out the configuration I will post an update and some better pictures.

Starizona webpage:

https://starizona.com/tutorial/balancing-a-fork-mounted-telescope/

 

Global Warming?

In March of 2017 we moved to Lexington, MO. Since that time (April 2018) we have had exactly 12 fully clear nights! This does not include the evenings where it is clear for a few hours then cloudy the bulk of the night. Of those 12 clear nights, 5 were during the period around full moon. Temple 28 (11″ CPC) was set up April of 2017 and is still in the process of being calibrated. You need several clear nights in a row to get everything set up and running. In October of 2017 I was in Colorado for a writing retreat. I was told it was clear all week in Lexington, MO but in Colorado Springs where I was, we started out the week with a blizzard then 2 nights of clouds. During the total solar eclipse of 2017 Lexington saw heavy rain until 30 minutes before totality, then clouds after dark that night. There have been a number of clear days with cloud banks rolling in right at dark.

From 1993-1997 we lived in Weston, MO. Though there were times of bad weather, over all there were many nights of clear skies. Comet Hale-Bopp was visible almost every evening for several months. Comet Hyakutaki was also visible for several weeks. I don’t remember missing any major astronomy events due to bad weather during that period of time. Even the week of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy Crash was clear.

I am not sure what has changed. I realize that every location, even those only a few miles apart, will have slightly different weather. Lexington is about 50 miles east of Weston and does get different fronts and weather patterns. As this is written we are in a La Nina which includes enhanced chances of clouds, but not usually as much as we are seeing. Is it global warming, global cooling or maybe just a really cloudy year? Al that I know is when we have this many clouds it is hard to have astronomy as your hobby!

“A Thing of Beauty!”

In earlier blogs I outlined the continuing saga of the 11″ CPC. Through all the struggles I have experienced with this telescope my new name for it is “Leviathan.” The name is especially fitting considering that the amount of work it took to move a scope of this size before receiving the Celestron CPC Wedge. Some reading this blog will have even larger telescopes than I but for me the 11″ is truly Leviathan.Recently the wedge that I ordered from High Point Scientific came in. My first thought was “A thing of beauty.” Though it is heavy, 38 pounds, it seems to be made of  black anodized aluminium. The fact that there was no difference between the cell phone being close to the mount and moved away from the mount would seem to bear witness to this. So after using the bubble level on the mount to level up the tripod, the wedge was added easily with the provided bolts. It took about 3 minutes to polar align the wedge when I used my cell phone! This took more time since I was trying to make sure the wedge metal was not throwing off the phone.

After using the supplied knobs my son and I added the telescope to the wedge. After waiting until evening the mount was aligned and auto guiding was engaged. However, the mount did not want to autoguide under Maxim DL. Seemed to be a driver issue so I engaged PHD 2 and took 20 images of M57 as a test. Though the focus was soft and I was having issues setting up the filter menu, the image of M 57 came out fairly well.  (See picture below)

Leviathan Awakes!
M 57 with PHD guiding

My autoguiding setup is a ST-80 with a ZWO ASI120MM camera set up for pulse guiding. Turns out pulse guiding works but sometimes the mount driver crashes and then you have to restart your computer to get it back again. After a little research I have used the provided ST-4 cable and will try guiding it that way instead. ST[4 guiding is much less hassle free than using the pulse guided method. Will post an update after the next clear night!

Confessions of an Ignorant Astronomer…Part 2

Confessions of an Ignorant Astronomer…Part 2

 

At one time I had an ST80 telescope and Meade DSI attached to do autoguiding on the 11″ CPC telescope. As described in part 1 it never worked very well due to the practically non-existent tension on the worm gear. So I had switched to the internal chip guided ST-8E camera hoping that it would make the balancing issue much easier to deal with. Obviously, adjusting the drives correctly was the real solution!

 

The other big issue is polar alignment. This CPC (Temple 28) has a solid, non-adjustable wedge that came with the telescope. The way to adjust it is to physically move the mount side to side and up and down. This just makes doing fine adjustments to polar align a caveman’s chore. To change the altitude you grab the front leg, lift the scope, loosen the leg locking screw, adjust the leg, lock it back and gently lower it to the ground. To change the azimuth you kick, push or bang the mount right or left! Not a procedure for the feeble of body!

 

Fork mounts, like the one on the CPC are wonderful but very hard to polar align! There is no polar scope or other easy to use method for getting things even roughly lined up. Typically you place the telescope pointing as close to the pole position as you can, with the tube perpendicular to the base and the scope pointing directly towards the pole, spot Polaris in the main scope and you will be close. After that you can drift align to make it more accurate. All of this is relatively easy, if you have an adjustable wedge! There has to be a way to do it easier and maybe get it close in daylight even with a non-adjustable wedge.

 

Enter the cell phone method! You take a cell phone, strap it to the wedge, turn on your planetarium app on your cell phone and then move the wedge until the pole is positioned inside the Telrad circle and you will be close. It is quite brilliant and seems to work well for the majority of people that use it, and then review it. One caution you have to strap something non-metallic onto the wedge so the close proximity to the metal in the wedge won’t throw off the compass. Since I did not want to take it apart I strapped the phone to an area below the wedge, knowing it was not as good but would work. Wow, this is way easier but I still couldn’t get it to come out right.

 

So looking to make an adjustment, I lifted the already teetering mount up on one of its back legs. Suddenly the mount started to tip and I reached out to grab it, trying to ease its fall enough that nothing would break. With soft ground and slowing its fall the telescope hit without damage! The term, “heart stopping” flashed through my mind! Since it was already down and I need help to lift up the whole telescope, it seemed prudent to separate the wedge, mount and telescope. Putting the cell phone and books on the wedge and mount itself and not the telescope base it was quickly determined that there was no way to use the included wedge without the telescope falling over!

 

The wedge was designed for 32 degrees in New Mexico. The angle on the wedge was approximately 25 degrees with the difference being made by raising or lowering the telescope leg. I had used it at 35 degrees in northern New Mexico but when reflecting on it, the mount seemed somewhat unstable even at that time. Adding 3 to 4 degrees to the tilt just made it totally unusable!

 

Now a Celestron CPC super wedge needs to be purchased. There are other products that even work better than the super wedge but are much more expensive. After years of frustrating use of Temple 28, it will be a joy to finally be able to get everything right, with minimal effort and just do astronomy!

Confessions of an Ignorant Astronomer…

Since tomorrow starts the busiest week of the year for me I packed up last night and went in at 11:30 after the scope lost alignment for the 2nd time. Functioning on 4 hours of sleep the night before as well as a high dose of Predinsone for heat induced asthma issues did not help the motivation factor. The 11″ or Temple 28 just would not work! A 4 mph wind came up and started blowing it all over the place so thought I was still dealing with balance issues. I had hoped the ST-8 camera with it’s internal guiding chip would solve the issues that I was having with a heavy external auto-guider. When that still didn’t work I gave up and went to bed!

When the 11′ was purchased I was assured that the mount had been worked on (hypertuned) but that it all needed more work and was unfinished. That is definitely true, everything is well lubed, clean and polished internally but still needed a lot of wiring and work. I had noticed while loading it in my car, that when you bumped the scope you could hear the worm gears skitter over the main gears. Not being familiar with this type of telescope (Celestron CPC) I had no idea that this was not normal and was just a balance/design issue with these scopes in general. The CPC were primarily for visual use and I was hanging lots of heavy cameras and stuff off of it so expected some problems. I had also heard that the tension spring was not very robust and that was a flaw of the CPC series. So over the years I added weight and contraptions to try and get better balance so it would not get bumped or blown and lose alignment. Some of the time it worked some of the time it didn’t. 

When I woke up this morning the decision was made that I needed to do some work related chores today and not mess with telescopes. So I got a home office wifi issue solved so I could work at home easier and decided to get busy on my office work. Only to realize I had forgotten to post the file where I could access it at home. Sooo…just couldn’t resist thinking about this problem and decided to do a little research on the CPC instead. After looking at other peoples issues It struck me that the problem seemed like a tensioner on the drive motors needed adjustment. Outside it was 105 heat index but I just had to know if that was causing the issue. After pulling off 5 cover screws and looking at the tensioner the adjustment screw was practically falling out and the tension on the worm was almost nonexistent! In fact the nut that keeps it all tight and adjusted was completely away from where it needed to be. So even if it had been adjusted once,  it would not stay that way very long, especially after 3 moves in 1 year! Three minutes later…problem solved, at least on one axis. After the scope was put back together, cranked it through from side to side several times and it worked without a hitch! In fact it sounds smooth and has no slippage even if you put a little pressure on the fork. In all of the trouble shooting articles read today the importance of listening for gear noise, chatter or sounds of strain were emphasized as part of diagnosis and adjustment. 

Now the adjustment is not really why I am so dumb and mad at myself…it is because I have had this telescope for three years and didn’t figure it out until now! When you have slipping gears it is no wonder it is hard to internal guide, external guide, balance or anything else! One or two images would look good then 2 bad would follow with no rhythm or reason. Drives you nuts! When I was researching the issue this morning I saw a guy in England that had an CPC with an oversize finder, 102 mm triplet telescope attached, 2 cameras plus the main 8″ scope. I was having trouble with just a camera and OTA! That’s when I knew I was a total moron! His issue was the nylon clutch but in the course of replacing the clutch there was a description of how to adjust the tension. In fact, to make it worse, I know how my LX200 looks internally with a similar design and it has no slippage issues at all! So why didn’t I think there was something wrong with the RA gear from day one? 

However, there are two axis on a scope. So after 1 hour, 20 dollars in tools, contortions to take off 6 torx screws to get to the drive unit and a bit of dehydration, (real temp 104 and “feels like temp 117”) the declination is now adjusted as well. So now I am all set to have a productive night tonight…Not. Severe thunderstorm warning until 1 AM and cloudy all week.

Trying out a new semi-permanent station for the telescopes. Trailer screw cemented into the ground then straps and and metal cable to hold it down against the wind. Thunderstorm in 2 hours so it is a proof of concept night. The left scope is the AR102, and Sirius mount covered by an actual insulated telescope cover. The scope on the right is wrapped in a waterproof tarp covered by an heavy duty weather resistant canvas tarp. It is all bungeed down tight to the trailer screw. Hopefully, things will stay tied down and will not pop up in another blog entitled…”Stupid!”