Testing #2 on 29 Dec 2022

After more than a month of cloudy nights and non stop raining, the sky tonight is finally clear enough for me to haul out the scope in front of the house to do some more testing! 

The pier goes out first, followed by the counterweights. 

The trolley with the powerbank, eyepieces, AutoStar and accessories next.

Finally the optical tube assembly or OTA. 

Next, I aligned the axis of the mount to face exactly North, using my iPhone compass app (ensuring that it is set to true north, not magnetic north). Twenty plus years ago, before the advent of smartphones, I had to do it with a good old compass and back then I didn't know about the need to adjust and compensate for true north! 

After ensuring the pier is completely level with the iPhone level app and using a mini jack to make minor adjustments, I locked the wheels of the pier and put in the counterweights. 

OTA goes on next, balance check, lock to "home position" and basic setup is ready. All done in just under 20 minutes. Not too bad if I say so myself ! 

Plugged in the powerbank and AutoStar controller, connect the controller to my laptop, power on the drive and we're in business.  

My Meade 826C 8inch f/6 Newtonian Setup

Using mini jacks to ensure the pier is level

Once powered up, I did the 2 star alignment and pointed it to the gibbous Moon which was almost directly overhead. It's off by about 4 degrees. That's because I did not bother to center the stars for the alignment. Why ? Because after so many years, I've forgotten how to do it ! Need to read up the manuals again to re-learn it. 

I centered the moon on the finder scope and peered thru the 40mm eyepiece at the main focuser to center it using the the #497, then go back to make minor adjustments to center the finder scope. 

Tested the recently acquired 6mm, 15mm, with and without the 2x Barlow, works as expected ! Saw the moon, Jupiter and its moons, The Pleiades. Tried Saturn but it was too close to the horizon and there were some cloud covers.   

Next, I inserted the 2x Barlow and then plug in my Canon 750D DSLR and took this : 

Moon - taken with a Canon 750D with 2x Barlow

Not too bad for a first ever attempt using a digital SLR camera ! The is without any adjustments all. With further fine tuning, I believe it can be a lot better. 

The last time I tried to take a photo on the Moon was with a Canon film camera! 

More to come ! 

Wheels II - The Sequel

I have added a set of wheel for the telescope pier abou 2 weeks back. Now I realised that they need to be secured to ensure that the polar alignment stays in place when I do the setup. So there has to be a locking mechanism. So I went online and looked for an M12 screw type castor and luckily I found them. 

This is the new set of wheels. The main difference is that it has a metallic flap that you can push down to lock the wheels and prevent it from moving. 

Star test after 17 years

9:00pm Saturday 17 Dec 2022 - some parts of the sky was clear and Jupiter and Mars was visible. The Moon only rises at about 3:00am. December has been a difficult month, it's the monsoon season and it's been raining with overcast everyday for the past month. 

Finally there is some break in the clouds and it's time to star test the telescope after being dormant for close to 17 years! 

Moved all the equipment out to the front on the house and hope to take aim at some brighter object to do so testing. Managed to set this all up in about 25 minutes, without 2 or 3 star alignment since the Meade Autostar handbox LCD screen is not working and not displaying anything at all. 

Managed to get a glimpse of Jupiter with a 30mm Plossl at 40x. Looks great, the image was crisp and clear, testament to Meade's great optics that still works after 37 years. 

First night testing the old Meade 826C 

Next was Mars, and used 15mm Celestron Luminous eyepiece at 80x, looks great. But the clouds rolled in again and visibility was reduced. 

I've been using the handbox to slew the telescope at different speeds. Glad to confirm that all other functions of the #497 still works very well. Can't wait to get the LCD screen fixed! 

Yes, I can still use my laptop computer to point and click to slew the scope but I didn't want to haul everything out at this time.

As for the new FlashFish 48,000mAh power bank, it's well worth the investment. After about 1 hour of slewing around, the status still at full bar. Not too bad. 

FlashFish power bank with 12V DC output

By then it was about 10:00pm and with no much else visible, I've decided to call it a night. 

Not too bad. Taking it one step at a time. 

More testing to come! Especially for the Meade Autostar 497 handbox and tracking system.

I hope to take photos with my DSLR camera attached in future outings. 

Wheels

The original pier that came with the Meade 826 did not have any wheels, making it difficult to move around. Which is one of the key reason why I didn't haul it out to the nearby field to do observations as often as I would or should. 

So this time around, my focus is to find ways to make it easier to transport and setup the telescope. Having a good set of wheels for the piece will go a long way. 

I stumbled across the furniture moving castors / wheels at Ace Hardware while shopping last week. The concave area inside the 3 wheels looks ideal for the round leg of the pier. So I decided to get a few of them. Much to my delight, it fits perfectly ! The original screw jack can also go thru the center hole and can be locked into position.

Here's how it looks now :

I am back, after close to 12 years since my last blog post

 My last posting was on 25 Jan 2010. 

That was close to 12 years ago. Time flies. I was busy pursuing my career, at that time I just took on a new job role in a large conglomerate as the head of IT department. 

Fast forward 12 years, I have finally found the time to restart for my very first hobby which got me started on this journey like 41 years ago. 

But first thing first - my 8 inch Newtonian telescope has been in cold storage and it's time to take it out and do a thorough check on it and see whether it can still be used. 

I will update the status of the assessment and my plan to restore this beautiful piece of equipment which will take me on another journey across the universe !

Stay tuned !  

P.S. The scope buggy was never built.