It's been a wet year in Nebraska and that means the usual mosquito herd is larger than normal. The first night, Sunday, there was only a modest breeze that faded around sunset; the herd emerged and immediately zeroed in on me. My bug spray was unable to hold them off and I was forced to retreat to a screened enclosure after obtaining only a polar alignment. No imaging.
Monday night had a partly cloudy hour, but Tuesday through Thursday Nights were all cloudy with episodes of rain. So for me NSP 2019 was a bust. At best I would have gotten one solid night had I been able to endure the biting.
I have a feeling that as the trend of increasing rainfall continues (thank you, global warming) this will be the case more and more often. That means it's time to adapt.
My thought is that if I can work from a screened enclosure I can manage even on those really buggy nights. This means I need an enclosure and a way to control my imaging rig from a distance of maybe 20 feet or so.
At present I control everything using a single USB cable from laptop to imaging rig. According to standards this limits me to about 16 feet between laptop and rig. Subtracting 6 feet for drops to and from the ground and I'm left with about 10 horizontal feet of separation, so I need to extend my USB. This can be done using powered USB repeaters, but that would mean added connections and power lines. the simpler way is to use an Ethernet extender like this:
This passes USB between two boxes via up to 60m of Cat5 or Cat6 Ethernet cable, with only the box on the rig requiring external power. Some serendipity: The required power is 12V DC and uses the same connector I'm already using with my USB hub on the rig. And the on-rig box acts as a powered four-port USB hub. The only drawback is that this is strictly USB 2, so if I add a USB 3 device I'm in trouble. This is available on Amazon for under US$60.
Focusing is not pleasant when you're being bitten, so a motorized focuser is needed. Unfortunately the only motorized focusers for an AT-65EDQ cost close to $1000 when all is said and done. This is a very nice little scope, but I'm not sure I want to spend that kind of money on it. A much less pricey option is a JMI Motofocus, but they have stopped making them for the AT65 and I could find no vendor who has one in stock.
Luckily some years ago I was given an Orion version of the Motofocus. It wasn't designed for the AT-65, but it was close. All I needed to do was add a small piece of aluminum sheet to it and buy a couple of longer bolts. I made a nice long phone cord so that it can be used over a much greater distance than the coiled handset cord it came with.
The piece of aluminum (silver rectangle in the above image) is epoxied to the Orion-provided mounting bracket to extend it the required distance. The longer screws and small stacks of washers provide the needed offset to keep things square and allow the larger focus knob to rotate freely. Note that there is no clutch on this so while the motor is attached there is no manual focusing. If you need manual, just undo the two outermost screws on the bracket and replace the motor with the AT65's fine focus knob.
The last operation is one I can't really do much about: polar aligning. This will still require standing at the scope and adjusting azimuth and altitude by hand. Nothing is perfect :)
The final adaptation is a freestanding screened area that's large enough for setting up a small table and chair. I went with this one from Coleman:
So I'm now set for the mosquitoes. Unfortunately there's nothing I can do about clouds and rain, but that's always been the case.
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