Travel Setup – Page 3 – IMT3b Observatory

Viewing Report 25th/26th August 2019 – Travel Scope

Viewing time period – 22:34 – 04:12

After a full day of all three geeks making more changes to the observatory, I setup my travel scope, Esprit 120 to get some more time logged before taking it on any serious holiday.

Before starting I thought I would record, compute and apply a Periodic Error Correction (PEC) model to the MyT mount similar to doing the one on the MEII earlier. Recording it was fairly straightforward using TheSkyX (TSX), connecting to my camera and then continuously recording the output to a log which you then read in and apply. Even though the log looked pretty terrible a periodic curve was able to be computed and looked a good fit and represented a peak to peak error of +/- 0.5 arcsecs.

Connecting the camera to PHD2 though was somewhat of a challenge, I managed to guide in DEC but the RA was wildly out even though I tried a few different settings for the aggressiveness and Hysteresis which is the previous adjustment percentage to apply as well.

When trying to image with this sort of guide graph from PHD2 the resulting image is trailed. Note the greenness of the image is due to the bayer matrix array of the camera being RGGB and thus 50% of the light is in the green and would be corrected later. The picture below is a zoomed in portion of that image.

So instead I moved to TSX to see if it would guide any better, knowing full well that PHD2 should be able to do this if I could get the right settings. In TSX I took the default values and then choose a guide star and started guiding. The output is fairly similar to PHD2 in the graph and immediately the RA error again could be seen and the resulting trailing of the image taken with EZCAP on the Mac apparent.

At this point I changed the settings for the guiding in TSX noting that the calibration was really quick, almost too quick, with a single move of the scope in either axis which is not enough. So I changed the calibration distance for both axis from 100 pixels to 200 pixels, I also changed the Minimum and Maximum move figures from 0.01 arcsecs and 10 arcsecs to 1 and 2 arcsecs respectively. Finally I added a delay after correct of 2 seconds.

I then started guiding again to look at the results. The new set of data was promising with the RA axis having a lot less correction needed and the scatter graph (to the right) being a tighter set of points which is good and requiring less correction.

Well that was enough tonight and I was pleased with a bit more work being completed on the scope so as the clouds rolled in I packed up and went to bed.

Viewing Report 20th/21st July 2019 – IMT3 Observatory & Travel Scope

Viewing time period – 21:15 – 02:15

There were two things I wanted to do tonight, one was to get first light with GingerGeek through the Skywatcher Esprit 120ED, the other was to setup my Esprit 120 on the MyT in the garden and grab a photo of the Moon to celebrate 50 years since Neil and Buzz stepped out onto the lunar surface. As a bonus I wanted to to get the guiding working on the MyT too.

As GingerGeek opened the dome on the IMT3 I setup the portable gear on the patio. I connected the setup to a 12V car battery to see how well it did at running the Mount and the camera. The initial voltage of the battery was 13.1v when I started. I connected the camera to EZCap and the Mount to TheSkyX (TSX).

Meanwhile GingerGeek opened the dome, connected the mount, opened the very geeky but cool Flip Flap covering the Esprit 120 and slewed to a bright star for deterring the focus and the position relative to the 12″ main scope.

Remarkably the focus was fairly near and after a few iterations GingerGeek managed to get the V curve sorted for good focus. Before this was done he setup the Luminance filter on the filter wheel control with SGPro that had not been configured. I then looked at the resulting image and determined the FoV within TSX. The field almost fits the 12″ and so the position is fairly close, close enough for solving and being in the right area for imaging. There was an error by SGPro complaining about 800px difference with what was to be expected, the problem being the difference in the angle of the Esprit 120 vs where the mount knows it is pointing as shown through the 12″.

Despite that we managed to take an image and then move on to see if we could guide with the 12″ off-axis guider for the Esprit. This worked a little but the guider graph was way off at various points, I believe this is potentially either a setup issue on the guider and/or the fact that we are too frequently taking too many images to correct and thus chasing the seeing. I will look at this next time are out.

Back on the portable setup, I managed to very quickly connect, perform polar alignment using the PoleMaster and the new bracket I fitted. I then slewed to a star which was not quite in the FoV so I need to spend more time on this next time I am out. No problems though, I nudged the scope and found the star. Performing a sync on this solved any further slewing problems.

I then waited for the Moon to come up over the roof tops which was unfortunately not until 2am of the 21^st thus slightly missing the landing date of 20th by 2 hours (Eagle landed at 9:17pm BST) but non the less still obtaining an image of the Moon to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the first lunar landing at the time Neil put that famous foot on the Moon at 1:56am BST on the 21^st July 1969 🙂

GingerGeek managed to get a few images but nothing much was showing on them especially the Elephant Trunk nebula he was imaging, I suspect, but am not sure, the wrong filter was selected so probably OIII rather than Ha as a previous Frame and Focus command through SGPro for 15 seconds showed the Elephant Trunk, at this point we were taking 10 minute exposures so it should have easily been visible. Again another problem to sort next time we are out.

Viewing Report 29th/30th June 2019 – IMT3 Observatory & Travel Scope

Viewing time period – 22:01 – 03:18

Tonight Bob will be learning how to control the observatory and using the Tak FS102 to trying imaging. Meanwhile I will be setting up my new Paramount MyT on its Berlebach tripod and with a new Sky-Watcher Esprit 120 mounted on top. The business end has my new QHY168C, yes I purchased a 2nd one, they are that good.

Whilst Bob played, I setup the travel kit on the new patio. I realised I could connect the camera through the USB on the MyT to one cable that won’t get snagged. I will however need to connect a power for the camera as that is currently trailing. There is a power connector on the back of the mount but I believe it is only rated to 1amp. There is however another power out which is rated at 7.5 amps so I will buy a Tycoon KPPX-4P 4 pin couple of connectors and makeup a cable so I can plug into that directly.

So I connected to TheSkyX with the mount and slewed to Arcturus. I could not connect the QHY camera to TheSkyX as I seem to be missing a driver. I will take a further look tomorrow to see if there is one. Instead I used the EzCap software they provide and connected the camera to that.

I focused manually as I have not motor focus to keep things simple, and soon had stars in view. I then did a manual spiral search until I found Arcturus and then synced on it. I could then slew around the sky with ease.

For polar alignment I have ordered (my friend GingerGeek has ordered) a PoleMaster mounting plate that I can use, this will make it easy to align. Tonight I just plonked the mount down without any polar alignment, thus anything more than 10 seconds produced trailing.

I tested cooling the camera, slewing and parking, although I need to see the park position 180 degrees from the current position to allow the scope rings to be in the right place for removing the OTA.

The scope and the mount and the camera make a great travel setup, each component is not too heavy to move by itself, the connection and setup is fairly straightforwards and I really do look forward to testing this out in October in Tenerife. I do need to test running from a car battery to see how long things last. I have my car battery I use for astronomy on charge and will test next time.

The connection of the camera to the flattener is a push fit and is missing the luminance filter. I will order the right adapters from Modern Astronomy so that I can fit later.

So I still have a few things to make, buy, test and do before October but good progress tonight on the travel setup front.

Meanwhile Bob has been making good progress with the Tak FS 102 in the IMT3. Imaging Arcturus and testing lengths of exposure on different objects such as M13. Some pieces of the sky Bob was imaging at 5 minutes unguided and others such as M13 only 3 minutes. I need to look at why this is given I now think the polar alignment from last night is excellent.

I reset the FoV indicator for the Tak FS102 in relation to the main 12″ scope. I need to find a way of slewing to given object for the offset scopes. I also need to be shown how you use SGPro to slew too, rather than using TheSkyX, so a slew, plate solve and then final adjustment.