A Brief Pause

The seasons have changed again, at least according to the calendar if not the thermometer. Despite the pleasant autumn I managed to be lazy and not haul my imaging gear out. I think an early cold snap convinced me it was winter. The reality is it's almost the new year, so time for a look ahead to 2024.

C9.25 and TV-102 back in service

As a last gasp of 2023 activity I did do a little bit of scope maintenance. First it was the turn of my old Celestron C9.25 to get collimated; I had cleverly manage to mess up its alignment to the point it was useless. This time I was very careful. Only small adjustments were made until I had it close to correct. I'll still have to do a finer tuning in the spring/summer when I can get the scope out under some decent stars.

The other bit of work was for my TV-102. Some years ago (nine? Amazing how time flies!) when imaging  IC 348 in Perseus, I noticed an irregularity in the flare around 4th magnitude omicron Persei. You can see it as a notch at about 5 o'clock.  

Omicron Persei with a mysterious dark notch

Here's a link to the full image on AstroBin. For comparison, here is Gamma Cas with my FSQ106, showing what a flood of starlight should look like.

Gamma Cas (FSQ-106EDX4)

The dark notch isn't awful, but it is a serious distraction. The primary suspect was something in the optical path. It was a simple thing to point the scope at a light surface and look through the objective from the focuser end. Clearly apparent was a sort of bump protruding into the circle of the objective. But what was it? Had something fallen into the OTA?

In the dangerous tradition of "monkey see, monkey disassemble," I took off the objective cell and discovered the problem. A bit of the TeleVue flocking paper inside the telescope tube had blistered up and gotten into the way of light. The fix was obvious to this monkey so I carefully filed down the petrified bump, put the objective cell back in place, and called it a done deal. 

Then something amazing happened: I had a thought. I wondered if I had gotten the cell back in place correctly, and was the scope still optically aligned? Dashing to the Internet I started reading posts about the travails people had collimating TV-102s. Also how they often had to fabricate clever jigs to do the alignment. Said jigs were far beyond my technical skill to create, so I was depressed. Not wanting to admit to myself that I might have made more trouble than I had remedied I set the scope aside and moved on to  imaging with my C9.25 (not yet misaligned), AT65EDQ, and eventually FSQ-106. I'd revisit the potential damage later.

Fast forward nine years to the other night when I put the TV-102 on the mount and actually looked through it at a star. It wasn't a complete star test, but at 90X Polaris A and B looked like pinpoints. At  450X racking in and out a touch gave decently symmetric airy disks. So maybe I got really lucky and it's fine. The old scope can rejoin the fleet now. I would like it functional for that eventual time when I return to visual observing. It works wonderfully with my 31mm Nagler Type 5 hand grenade, and to me it looks like the classic telescope. A picture of it from 2008 still graces the WhiteRock Conservancy (home of the Iowa Star party) web site.

AT65EDQ

After adding the FSQ-106 for imaging my poor AT65 has languished. It's an imaging scope that's corrected to provide astrograph flatness, meaning it's not a so great for visual use. Its FL of 420mm (f/6.5) is close to that of the FSQ with the 0.73X reducer (f/3.65 and 387mm) so it's somewhat redundant. But it is small and light and could easily sit on something less substantial than my G11. 

All it really needs to be a little sibling to the FSQ is electronic focusing, so that's what I'll be adding to it. And a nice Seahorse hard case for travel. Then I only need to rig a way to mount the Pegasus powerbox to it. More about that next time.

Veil Mosaic

I have all the data, I've been delaying processing until snowy winter hibernation mode starts. In the Twin Cities in a given year a "white Christmas" with 1" of snow or more on the ground has a chance of about 71%. But that won't happen this year!  The ground is bare and the forecast is for a record-warm 53 on Christmas Eve with a possible thunderstorm. The non-winter of 2023-24 is on track to continue into January.

When the snow finally arrives I'll start with a mosaic of the luminance data first to see what I've got, then repeat for each of the color channels.

 AstroBin Voting

I like to post my better pictures on AstroBin. It's mostly a vanity exercise but I think that posting technical details about images can be helpful to others. I know I've learned some things by seeing how other people acquire their data. 

Because AstroBin is a sort of social medium members are allowed to vote for images and there are best image designations. Some people complain that it's highly subjective, motivated by people trying to build their posse of followers, get votes in return, etc. All of that is possible but I don't care. It's fun, and I like it when I get up-votes. Although I admit I don't often understand why some of my images get more votes than others I've posted.

I've noticed something odd in the last year or so, though. Some of my dusty old posts that have been sitting quietly will suddenly get a flurry of votes from unfamiliar people. An example is this image of Jones 1 from 2015. Earlier this month it got four new votes within a few minutes of each other. Other people have imaged this object and created far better images than mine, so I have to ask why I got those votes.

Possibly it's people fishing for votes, but why would they reach back to an image from eight years ago? Why not take the time-honored approach of following someone so that they'll reciprocate and build your posse?  The near-simultaneity of the votes makes me think it might be something more devious.

Oh well, maybe the applicable adage is "don't look a gift horse in the mouth." So I say: Thank you  for your votes, mysterious time-lagged strangers! Maybe next time don't wait 8 years!