Do you have those nights where it all goes wrong... and you just pack up for the night?

[Physopto]

On 11/10/2020 at 13:33, gaz81 said:

So last night... thought excellent, weather kind of clears up later on and it’s weekend.. nice. 

I recently got a Baader modified 100D and a cheap Skywatcher filter to try out.  Also had remounted my guide scope in some little rings so it wasn’t sticking right out on the skywatcher finder one (the 9x50).  

First off found out my filter had a scratch... had it couple of weeks already, maybe I did it somehow.. Duno, but bit late now to send it back.  So thought let’s just see how it goes. 

So got set up outside... seem to be getting faster at Shapcap polar alignment with my AZ GTI, so that is always cool, try not to stop until I get excellent (garden is not flat, so always differnt when I set up). 

So after polar alignment was done... time for a little dark rum... 

Plugged in my little dew heater and all that jazz and turned it on

Now scope alignment time, tend to only need 1 star alignment. What a pain though, not sure if it’s a difference between the 50D and 100D but Vega seemed much dimmer in APT live view, so took ages.

As I had the camera and bits off and remounted the guide scope the focus was out of whack (as was aligning them in a terrestrial object in the afternoon), so took some time to get that sorted so I could see the stars in the first place. Doh. 

After all the messing though I got it aligned, flipped between Mars and Vega and Goto was all good. 

So... next fire PHD up. Here is where the next set of frustrations came. PHD just would not talk to the mount despite connecting  (had it working on my only other 2 proper imaging sessions).  Kept getting an error saying that pulse failed. 

So thought let’s try connect the mount in APT and see if that moans (I just use the SynScan app in windows for slew and Goto ). So APt connected to the mount... but failed to move it as it said it was ‘Parked’.  The unpark button just gave an error. 

In the end I had to uninstall the windows SynScan app and reinstall... then it started working.  

I think I broke it when messing with NINA, I pressed the park button and it didn’t work from there... but forgot I did that and didn’t think it would mess it up for other apps.

So thought ok... let’s go. My target was NGC7000. 

Started up PHD again... forced a proper calibration and guiding started. All good. 

Did a 200 second test... and it just didn’t look right. 

It seemed the focus was way out... which was odd as I used a Bhat mask to focus earlier. 

Looked at the scope... realised with all the time messing around with the software, the dew heater had turned itself off (was running off a USB battery... so next lesson it will run off the mains). 

So looking at the lens there was a whole load of dew gunk mess on it 😞 Maybe this was also giving me my dim stars also  

Then some bigger clouds started to drift over  

At this point... I thought I’m done for the night, was about 12:30am.  Didn’t want to start cleaning it at that time  

Put all the kit in the garage and went for another rum  

Checked the scope this morning, and the lens is a mess, so need to clean that 

So lessons learned 

1. Double check all the software is talking during the day... and while messing with ‘new software’ take extra care  

2. Maybe make a mark on the draw tube for focus

3. Pay attention to dew... in the past I must have been lucky with very dry nights 

4. Trying to get to peeved off when it all goes ‘tits up’

The set up was a SW 72ED, AZ GTI, Canon 100D, SW 9x50 finder with QHY5 guide camera (ye old one). 
 

Oh well.... will have to wait for the next clear night. 

So many times in the same position where everything goes wrong, one after another. It gets almost to the point of a Keystone Cops comedy, without feeling so.

You probably did the right thing, another quiet drink  and give up until the next day. No point in bashing your head against a brick wall. There is always another day/night in the future. 🙂

Derek

[gaz81]

Like I said above, learning so much from the problems 🙂

Just a shame about the lack of clear nights!