Skip to main content

Astro PiFi

Search This Blog

Veil Nebula

on October 05, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

It's really coming together. Here's the Viel nebula. Ha only, single shot. Processing will come later.

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Hyperstar Hyper adjustments

Having some trouble with fine adjustments on the Hyperstar. The new hyperstar is great, but it's very sensitive to focus, tilt, corrector alignment and backspacing. I've been struggling to work through the tilt issues lately. Steps Here's the steps to achieve near perfect alignment when there is negligible tilt in the optics of the system: Zero all tilt adjustments in the system. Interactively test and adjust the height of each adjustment screw push/pull set using a dial gauge on a flat surface while rotating the component under the dial gauge. Do the camera first then the Hyperstar. Center the corrector plate Take the scope out at night and point it straight up. Loosen the corrector plate screws de-focus the system and examine the direction of the star elongation around the edges Adjust the corrector plate centering screws until all the elongation directions point away from the center of the image Tighten up the corrector plate Check for tilt in the system by rotating th

Stable Tripod Base

One thing that I've been really happy with is my idea for a tripod base as an alternative to a pier. I have two bases setup in my yard, one for each mount. I can polar align once, and be able to keep that alignment for months. I've seen PA of around 0.1 months after doing a drift align with PHD. This reduces my setup time drastically and allows me to be very methodical when doing an alignment. This is very simple to do. Just get threaded pipe and a flange attachment, screw them together like so: And pound three of them into the ground where the tripod bottoms are. Make sure the mount is roughly pointing in the right direction, and level. Do a very careful polar alignment once, and you won't have to do it again for a long time. You can now take the mount into the house at night, and bring it back out when you want to use it. Make sure not adjust Alt-Az on the mount or the tripod leg length, and you are good to go for quite a while!

GM811G Guiding

Problems I'm trying to fix: Spring (April 12 2032) Spikes in Dec. Seems to be a bit loose. I tightened it up a bit and it got worse. I loosened it and the spikes disappeared. Hard to tell if it's too loose or too tight sometimes. Spring (Feb 16th 2022 or so) spikes again. I think that I'm seeing a pattern. Dec had it pretty bad, turned out to be mostly bad PA, but the worm was also pretty loose. Still needs some adjusting though. RA was also pretty bad, but came down after improved PA. I may have to adjust it's worm also. DEC Spike! Not bad really. I was still imaging getting 0.5 to 0.8 but once in a while DEC would spike. I think that it must be some sort of flexure or cable snag etc. I just noticed that the guide scope focuser was a bit wobbly. I tightened it, and we'll see how it goes tonight. Solved! I tried several things including all kinds of balancing tweaks, tightening guider and guider camera, worm adjustments. Finally I tried tightening up the Dec c

Powered by Blogger