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 !