December Update

Winter Break Begins

The first Arctic blast of the winter has arrived and it's time to shut down imaging until spring. I've sent my Losmandy Gemini II off for its Level 6 factory upgrade, packed up all the optical gear and put it in the driest part of the house for winter storage, and have discharged all my lithium batteries to about 50% of capacity. The latter is for optimal battery health during several months of non-use. They'll get a recharge and second draining around February, and then get a full charge whenever spring decides to happen.

This treatment regimen includes the smaller LiFePo4 batteries that I'll probably haul up to the 2025 Northern Nights Star Fest for swapping/selling. 

The endless mosaic

I've decided to do a full reprocess of the mosaic starting from calibrated frames. Three of the panels have new light frames and will need to be re-integrated. So for the sake of uniformity and to improve the processing workflow I'll do it all again. Isn't reprocessing what winter is for?

Getting back into spectroscopy

My last activity of autumn was assessing the use of my AT65 astrograph for spectroscopy. I'm really unsure about using an astrograph for this purpose, as I'm concerned that putting the grating so close to the OTA's internal correctors will lead to smearing of the spectrum. Little did I know this was going to turn into a multi-night struggle as the mount and focuser had issues. Fortunately there were a few clear nights for fiddling with the focuser before the weather got too cold for me.

I had already adapted my old Pegasus FocusCube 2 to my AT65's focuser, but I had done it incorrectly. I had attached it to the fine-focus shaft. This led to absurdly fine focusing precision--and sometimes demanded too much torque from the FC2 causing it to seize. Putting it onto the coarse focus shaft solved the torque issue, and made it possible to rack out a couple of centimeters without having to wait half an hour.

Whether the change results in focusing that's precise enough to match manual focusing is something that won't be resolved until the spring. That's also when I'll configure it for backlash and autofocusing.

Maybe this is why the AT65 never appeared on the FocusCube compatibility list?

Stay warm everyone! Happy Holidays!

Revised Startup for APT/Stellarium/PHD2 et al.

I've updated all the software I use for image acquisition: APT, PHD2, Stellarium, and ASCOM. 

All the updating went without problems, so Yay!

However, my old way of starting all these in order of APT first, then Stellarium, and finally PHD2 seems to not work well any more. What seems to happen is that APT and Stellarium can't work through ASCOM correctly, and APT sometimes launches an instance of PHD2 out of impatience?

Some experimenting was needed, and the result is that the order of starting now goes like this:

1. Power the mount and allow time for it to boot. My Gemini 2 takes a couple of seconds, most others are probably faster
   
2. Power up everything else and insure it's all running and has made its USB connections.
   
3. Start Stellarium and let it connect to the mount (if all is good it should correctly show the direction in which scope is pointing)
4. Start PHD2 and connect it to the guide camera and mount
5. Start APT and connect it to the camera
6. Start the camera cooling via APT
7. Connect APT to the mount
8. At this point use PoleMaster to do a polar align using the ASCOM hand control, finishing with the scope in its park position (counterweight-down and approximately targeting the NCP)
9. Re-aim the scope far away from the NCP and train PHD2. You can delay this step until after you have pointed the scope at your target.
   
10. Sync the mount using APT's Point Craft (I use ASTAP for plate solving---it's amazingly fast and almost never fails to solve!
    
11. Use either Stellarium or APT's Go-To to acquire your imaging target. Do whatever composing you want.
    
12. Start PHD2 guiding or let APT handle things. 
13. Make sure your focus is perfect and start your exposure plan

Basically: power up, start the helper apps, start APT, start camera cooling, do polar align, sync the mount, acquire target, train PHD2, start imaging. If you're using autofocus, insert its setup where appropriate.

Worth noting is that the use of Stellarium (or any planetarium program) is entirely optional. APT provides extensive object lists and has similar Go-To and Sync features---everything you need to image.