A second Mesu.

[ollypenrice]

Last night was first light for our second Mesu 200, bought second hand from a nice guy called Bart, in Belgium. Like our other one it is a first generation model running the Stellarcat/Argonavis drives and handset. It will be about five years old but it looks literally brand new. It arrived with a Losmandy tripod adapter which I'll (maybe!) get round to incorporating into a dedicated pier. However, for the moment I just bolted the Losmandy adapter onto a scruffy but solid pier I made about twelve years ago. To my surprise this cobble-up seems to be as solid as a rock so it may be one of those long term temporary measures! It is in danger of passing the 'If it ain't broke' test...

The mount arrived with the Mesu/Losmandy polar scope, which was new to me. It worked remarkably well and would have given a workable PA just on its own. However, I wasn't in a hurry and did a reasonably long drift alignment which went well, the mount's adjusters working nicely. After putting my location into the Argonavis handset and re-setting the time and date I made the usual one star alignment and tried a Go To on M51. There it was, nicely centred. The mount sounds gorgeous, even sweeter than the other one, though that may just be the accoustics. The original lives in a block-built roll off.

Next I tried a random bit of sky and fired up PHD2 (using a Lodestar and 400mm guidescope.). I did a calibration and this is what came next...

I mean, what can you say???  First time out of the box, five years old and this is how it guides. Everybody knows I love the Mesu 200 but there's a reason for that. It is simply marvellous. A first twenty minute sub in the Atik 11000 gave this result on the random starfield. (Image not calibbrated.)

So the evening was a sweet success with the Mesu doing everything as close to perfectly as anyone could ask for.

I now have a second hand Atik 460 to set up so that we can go galaxy hunting with this rig. It will be running at 0.91 arcsecs per pixel which will not challenge the Mesu in the slightest.

First light sky conditions were excellent with an SQM of a tantalizing 21.99.

I have no commercial links with Lucas Mesu, have no access to discounts or other inducements and, indeed, have never bought a new mount from him, our other one having been originally bought by Yves Van den Broek. (It was Yves who tipped me off about this one being for sale and I'm mighty glad he did.)

Olly

 

 

[wxsatuser]

Nice!

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Looks gorgeous. If I ever win a lottery I might well get myself a Mesu (and observatory)

[Stu]

Looks lovely Olly, hoping to get a look through Gavster's TEC at some point soon  

Even to a non imager that sub looks cracking!

[AKB]

47 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

it may be one of those long term temporary measures! It is in danger of passing the 'If it ain't broke' test...

...at work, we had a bit of software called IGS, where the 'I' stood for 'interim'.  It was used for at least 20 years.

Lovely mount, and the piece of hardware sitting below the telescope looks pretty good too.

[gnomus]

Your guide graph is making me feel physically ill.  

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, gnomus said:

Your guide graph is making me feel physically ill.  

Yes, it's a bit like inverse sea sickness!

Olly

[tomato]

Congratulations Olly, how come all your guide graphs are so flat? Is there something in the water (or air or rock)?

[ollypenrice]

4 minutes ago, tomato said:

Congratulations Olly, how come all your guide graphs are so flat? Is there something in the water (or air or rock)?

Erm, well, they're not always so flat! The Mesu ones are, as were the Avalon's on windless nights, but I've had both good and bad from Takahashi and EQ6 and only bad from Meade LX200. I don't know about the rock! (In fact it's boulder/clay here.) The Avalon did register observer movements on the guide trace so I wasn't sure how good or bad my concrete base was. My first impression is that the observer can now get in and out without recording the fact on the trace, so I thnk it was more Avalon elasticity than concrete base. Not to knock the Avalon, though. It is a much lighter and more portable mount.

Olly

[tomato]

Thanks Olly, I certainly think your long and meticulous PA helps. On a temporary set up, my PA gets compromised if it doesn't play ball as I'm impatient to start imaging, with the inevitable detrimental effect on guiding.

Roll on the permenant observatory.