B.... of a Night!

[Fay]

Will itemise.

1. Head light would not come on, was using normal torch, until found problem, batteries very loose in the case.

2. tied a dozen times to get Altair, finder scope out of alignment. Restarted mount about 10 times.

3. Had to take camera off & put diagonal & eyepiece in to find Altair. Not easy as fr is screwed into the QSI & also into the back of ED80.

4. Found Altair but  Heart nebula nowhere to be seen, tried different exposures to no avail. tried other nebulae, to no avail also!

5, restarted everything again, walked into a spider web  ON MY FACE!! So had to carry broom around from there on.

6. Suddenly thought what was wrong, pier mount had moved , Polaris in wrong place!!!!!

7. Tried to sort it with everything still on board, too heavy.

8. Took everything off, to sort out pier. Wondering if it moved because I was leaving scope on there for a few days with weights on as well, don't normally do this!

To crown a very irritating night.........THE SKY IS PERFECT!!!!

9. Indoors, seething

Fay

[Tony G]

Fay,

Whatever substance you have taken tonight, can you bring some down to Mick's tomorrow.........the mount moving on its own, who would have thought it. 

No. 9 what that inside seething or inside seeing things.

Tony G

[Carole]

Blimey Fay, what a saga.  I can't believe your mount has moved on the pier, not something you would expect.

It's amazing how unexpected things can go wrong even when you've been imaging for years and frequently things you've not encountered before.

I had several "goes" on Thursday night with doing a good alignment and then wondering why I couldn't find my target.  Eventually sussed it out after the 3rd try - with the CCD camera I have had to move my Guide scope mounting plate further up in order to balance, and normally I tie up my cables from the guide camera and imaging camera onto one of the guide rings to stop them flapping around.  

With the guide scope further up, of course this made the ST4 cable to the mount a lot shorter, and in the dark (because I had the creeps about burglars (see other thread), I had all the lights turned right down to make myself less conspicuous, and didn't spot that although I had done a perfect alignment (3 times!!!), when I slewed to M27 the guide cable was getting caught round the polarscope and preventing the mount from slewing far enough.  It's a wonder it didn't do any damage to either the mount of the guide cable.  

So I repositioned the "tie up" for the cables lower down and next time it worked no problem.

I also encountered several spiders dropping down in front of my face - thank goodness for the spider catcher.

As you say - very annoying when it's a beautiful sky.

Carole

[Roy]

Fay,

I don't understand why you had to take all your clothes off to sort out the pier. 

Roy

[Roy]

Seriously though it was an excellent night and  I've only just come in from my first real attempt at imaging from our light polluted back garden. Also my first go with my modded 500D. We set the scope up this afternoon and had a look at the Sun and a few images. Then set it up again as it was getting dusk. I've taken some pictures of M31 but don't know if they're any good - probably not knowing my luck. Also did a couple of single shots of M13 and M27, and I was pleasantly surprised. Sue was also impressed.

See you tomorrow.

Roy

[Fay]

What i need is a good Bar-B-Q

[RobertM]

Homebase is just around the corner but I'm sure you can get much better Bar-B-Q elsewhere.

I'm very sorry to hear of your troubles, you must have started early to give up at that time !  The pier and foundation shouldn't move at all, that the whole point; it should be a fixed immovable object.  If it's moved then it's not good enough.  I suppose you checked that the polar alignment adjusters were tight ?

Robert

[Fay]

it was the mount, the pier is fine. i had it happen before

[JohnP]

blimey tough night Fay...! sorry to hear about all your woes - Yes night looked good last night... John