Image from a bit earlier in night showing the CGEM on the steel pier. The cabling will be improved at later date.
Tonight I was able to get out and setup the telescope some more. I installed the Celestron Edge 800 HD on the Tandem bar with the Orion Short tube 80. I looked high and low for my piggyback adapter plate, but have yet to find where I put it. The Side by Side setup actually works very well in the dome. My goal tonight was to get final polar alignment of the scope and the imager hooked up and a general focus spot established. I also wanted to get some more lighting up.
I installed some new white rope lights tonight, which will give me a good way to get some lighting inside when I need to be able to see. Tomorrow I will work on getting both the red lights and the white lights onto individual dimmer circuits. I will also work on installing the carpet I picked up today for the observatory and more installation of shelving. The final layout of my cabling has yet to be determined, I am still getting a feel for the operation of CGEM mount on the pier before I commit to the final cable layout.
This image shows the new white rope lights installed around the dome track area.
The image above also shows a temporary park location for the scope. I plan on changing the park to the opposite meridian position so I can start imaging in the eastern sky. The weather was not the clear skies the weather channel called for. Seems like the weather channel is never accurate anymore. I was able to do an initial balance and alignment; which the CGEM nailed almost dead on from the get go. I have been very pleased with how well the CGEM has been performing. Tonight I did use my Meade illuminated 9mm eyepiece to get the alignment process started. I added two alignment stars to the initial two star alignment. I had to wait several times for gaps in the clouds before I could proceed further with the routine. This made the alignment a long process, but gave me some time to work on other tasks within the observatory.
This image shows the Celestron Edge 800 HD and Short Tube 80 in side by side setup on the CGEM which is affixed to the new homemade pier.
Once I was finished with the alignment I setup the Meade DSI IIIC imager onto the Edge HD ota. My goal at this point was to do a polar alignment routine using my imaging camera. My first task was to use the Bahtinov mask to achieve critical focus with the DSI while pointed at a bright star. I chose Altair as my focus star. This took a few minutes due to waiting once again on sporadic cloud cover. Once this was done I decided to swing on over to M27 to see if I could get a few frames grabbed, even though the moon-wash was quite horrific. I saw M27 for a brief fleeting moment as once again a large body of clouds took it from sight. I had to take about an hour break at this point for any chance of openings to appear. I used this time to bring some more gear out to the observatory. I also setup a quick workbench at a nice height so I could work with my rings and adapters in comfort.
In background you can see my quick temp workbench setup. This will be installed tomorrow with a more permanent setup in mind.
I decided time was precious and synced up on Altair when I came back out and jumped into the CGEM polar alignment routine. When I told the scope to go to Altair the meridian flip routine happened, and the cgem did it very well, I was very impressed. It took just a few small pushes of the dome to get it in the correct position for the scope to track Altair. The sync was finished at this point and Altair was heading towards my tree block on the west of the dome and the clouds once again started coming in hard. I decided to go for the polar alignment anyways. I just started making adjustments to the mount polar alignment knobs when Altair faded out of site for good for the night. At this point in time I decided to close up the dome for the night after waiting 20 minutes for a cloud break, it was too late Altair was off into my tree out of reach for the evening.
Image from a bit earlier in night showing the CGEM on the steel pier. The cabling will be improved at later date.
My last task for the night was to establish a park or home position for the Edge HD on the CGEM. This task was quickly accomplished and I powered down for the evening. I will change the park position at a later date to the opposite side of Meridian, which will allow me to begin imaging in the Southeast skies. I spent another hour setting up my software updates on my laptop when I was done. I will continue where I left off on next night with semi decent skies. My tasks now are to do more work on interior organization along with the carpet installation and hopefully soon I will get to completing the slanted roof section.
I setup my security camera across the obsevatory and took this picture which gives an idea on size of interior and general layout.
Be sure to check back over next few days for more upcoming articles!
