Nightmare night

[Russe]

My god what was wrong with things last night??

First I played with PA because I wanted to try and go for 600s subs again. So I started with a ludicrously dangled webcam hanging from my polar scope. Once I had it focused, Polaris was just too dim to see anything on the screen. So I gave that up and did my usual EQMOD PA. Then slewed to a star for focussing - nada. Turned on AstroTortilla to center me - nada. Whaat??? So messed about for a bit, found it.

Then thought, PA must be rubbish - did AstroTortilla PA. Strange way of doing it - gives you errors in minutes/seconds and you are supposed to blindly adjust Alt/Az. Mhm. Not very confident. Turned back to alignmaster which got the job done. Anyway, back to my object, PHD on, Comodo (remote connect) on and in I went. At midnight, suddenly the PHD graph went south with no turning back. Do I left my cozy couch, only to discover that my handcontroller in "PC direct mode" had frozen (not literally). Argh.

Again re-started from scratch, but left the PA. That should be fine. And off things went again. Suddenly Comodo didn't work anymore - updating their services - "we'll be back shortly". Fair enough - things were running, so why not let's catch a few winks. At 4:30 I woke up with a start, only to see Comodo had finally connected again - yay - but an error message had popped up in PHD - some coordinate could not be read. I forget. Never seen before.

So out I go and set everything up again. Suddenly AstroTortilla didn't find anything - my pics were black! Huh?? Ah!!!! Dew!!! The finder totally dew'ed up and the secondary also (primary fine). So in I went to rummage around for my old German hair drier. Found it, found an old German electric plug connector too (we are here since 2008), and blow blow blow. Got my Mak's dewshield on top of the PDS. And got it going again and went to bed.

Lessons learnt:

do the alignmaster routine, it pays off

Get dew shields for Newtonian - hopefully prevents secondary mirror dew up - and for finder scope

Put thick towel over computer & handset on table beside gear - keeps moisture out and prevents trouble (mine tonight were only two thin tea towels)

And - try to figure out how to play an alarm if PHD has a problem.

[Russe]

Argh - just looked through my data - 28x300s only. I threw 50 odd away. Aaaaaaargh!!!!!!

[Russe]

Never thought a finder scope might need dewstrips... How do you guys keep the secondary dew free??

[PhotoGav]

Oh dear oh dear, that sounds like quite a night... Lots of learning, shall we say?! However, I think I might be to blame...

I had an absolutely cracking night, at long last! Got home from a long day at work, knackered, but with a recently delivered and as yet untried new piece of kit (focal reducer), a beautiful clear sky, the prospect of increasing moon and busier at work next week, I had to get out there... PHD was playing about a bit and did crash twice, but I managed to get a set of 360s subs of M81 with the 8" + reducer, at long last... Third attempt at this, but the new reducer has really helped things. I tried 600s subs, but they had movement - not sure why, to be worked on. So, blame me, I finally had some success!

As for dew, I have dew heater strips on the finder guider and the main scope - keeps everything ticketyboo!

[Russe]

Where do you place them on the scope? (Pic please) and where did you buy them?

[lensman57]

Never thought a finder scope might need dewstrips... How do you guys keep the secondary dew free??

I always have a dew heater strip on my finder scope as well as the one the main scope and now that I have bought a used QHY8,  I need to use one around the T spacer and the camera just in case the optical window decides to dew up. 

Regards,

A.G

[PhotoGav]

Here's a very dodgy pic of my SCT & finder with dew strips...

[Thalestris24]

Oh dear, Russe... Never mind, live and learn, eh? Moisture + electrics/optics = bad!!!

It is a bit fiddly to adjust Alt/Az using AT - I think you have to allow the time and patience to do it. Practice makes perfect - or better, at least! I don't know if it was an issue for you but I think the location co-ordinates and computer clock have to be spot on.

A PHD alarm could certainly be useful!

At least you got something - nothing but clouds here

Louise

[Russe]

Just got my stuff in this morning. There were high clouds throughout the night but I wanted a test run - 95% fine. I only forgot to actually enable the mount limits - doh.

PA was as good to perfect as I could get it - simply because I used a water level when the mount was in the home position: before EQMOD PA and before and after alignmaster.

My slews were pretty spot on.

Guiding was fine. No technical issues tonight either - used a thick towel to cover everything...

Maybe yesterday there was a change in weather and increased static or smth...

Well, let's see if I actually recorded some data...