Hackstrograph first light

[Ags]

I'm 40 years into this hobby and tonight was the first night I polar aligned. Only very approximately as the clouds were almost continuously blowing through the polarscope view. But I confirmed I could contort into a position to look through the polar scope and could make out Polaris in the scope, so progress! My old AZ-GTi was making its first outing in EQ mode, and I had slight hopes that the periodic judder the mount makes every second would not occur in EQ mode (50-50 odds as only one motor would be engaged). I need more counterweights but it turns out the AZ-GTi could track the Moon despite the misbalance. The hackstrograph itself is a Long Perng 90mm refractor with an SCT f6.3 reducer attached. Sadly I could not photograph a star field, but at least the Moon showed through the clouds and confirmed I could reach focus with 2 cm infocus to spare. Based on the photograph I took I calculate that the hackstrograph is operating at f3.76 and 338 mm focal length.

Sadly the AZ-GTi still judders even in EQ mode, so I need to open it up tighten all the whatsits...

Edited December 2, 2023 by Ags

[Ags]

I had 15 minutes of clear sky tonight, so I pointed the hackstrograph at the Pleiades. I haven't fixed the AZ-GTi yet, so the view 'ticks' every second or so. As a result I shot 333 ms subs while the gap in clouds lasted. Despite the short subs, I still had to throw away 75% of the subs - I would have had more keepers switching off tracking of course but I wanted to see how it would handle tracking and the goal was just to check how flat the field would be on my ASI485MC so I didn't need to gather a lot of light. The mount did track well despite the slightly higher elevation of the Pleiades...

I am quie pleased with the stars at the edges, but I need to find my Astronomik L3 filter to improve the bloaty blue stars.