Beaglehaven Observatory is under way!

[BKBrown]

Hi folks, just thought I'd provide a few pix as inside work begins in earnest. The place looks a lot more like an observatory with the newly primed, painted, and installed pier plate assembly in its proper place. Here is a view from the east side, you can see the electrical cable running up the side and ready for future finishing...



Next is a closer view of the "cage" to illustrate what I had to do to compensate for the shorter-than-expected pier height. Using threaded couplers, I added six inch sections of threaded rod to the top of the J bolts that support Dan's Pier Top Plate. The rod runs through the secondary plate with a washer and nut on both sides the rest of the section goes up high enough (barely!) to support the DPTP and adapter with just enough room underneath to get my hand in to tighten things up. The top adapter plate now sits dead level at the intended height of 40". When I install the Atlas tomorrow, the overall height to the center of the saddle will be 58"...right where I want it Everything is torqued down tight and it feels enormously solid. This image is taken from the plan view to show the plumbing...



The final image is taken from slightly above to accentuate Dan's 12" Pier Top Plate which I think is both a superbly crafted piece of gear, and a work of art. Everything went together flawlessly. Next it is time to mount the Atlas and hook up the basic operating system to check everything out. If I have an hour or two of clear sky tomorrow evening, I will do the iterative alignment and get my gear back in the game. I'll try to make sure and get some more pix to post here. More later...



Clear Skies, Brian

[BKBrown]

Ahhh, that's better. With the Atlas safely in place and a scope on board, the astro-shed starts to feel positively observatory-like. The only glitch I ran into was seating the Atlas on Dan's Pier Top Plate...very minor issue. But here is the valuable safety tip: make sure you have the post for the azimuth bolts almost as tight to the plate as you can with just enough space to lock down the nut. I didn't do this initially and the base collar on the Atlas would not settle all the way in. No big, just something to remember. The OTA is balanced, I'll hook up power later...but it looks like I'll get First Light tonight I am going to try Alignmaster for the first time to do the polar alignment, anyone have any advice for this software? Thanks for dropping by!



Clear Skies, Brian

[Phil Leigh]

Alignmaster - make sure your mount is level .....oh I guess you've just spent a lot of time and money doing that :-)
If the mount is level, it makes the software a lot easier to use - as you will find.
Hopefully you have good 360 degree views?

Looks great by the way - very jealous!

[ChuckWalters]

Looks great Brian! Celebration time. Good luck tonight with the first "OBS" light.

[BKBrown]

Alignmaster - make sure your mount is level .....oh I guess you've just spent a lot of time and money doing that :-)
If the mount is level, it makes the software a lot easier to use - as you will find.
Hopefully you have good 360 degree views?

Looks great by the way - very jealous!

Hi Phil,

The mount is dead level and I believe I am no more than a degree or so from true north in any direction. Tragically, I have truly miserable horizons here and no north polar view...hence the iterative alignment requirement. I do have a decent view of the meridian and can see down to maybe 35-40 degrees elevation in the south (there is a large house in the way), so I am hoping I can pull this off. Thanks!

Clear Skies, Brian

[BKBrown]

Looks great Brian! Celebration time. Good luck tonight with the first "OBS" light.

Thanks Chuck, the party is already under way here!

Clear Skies, Brian

[fmhill]

Brian, Best of luck with your first light! Hope the clouds cooperate for you and the new observatory...

[Carolgentle]

Hi Brian,

We're all great here thank you
Have been following your progress and I see that you're hoping for first obsy light tonight. Woohoo! Excellent, looking forward to seeing your first lot of images. Nothing much doing here astronomy wise but that's usual for the UK. Non astro stuff has been hectic and we've done alot at the festival. Happily though, the end of August should mean the new astro season for us will just about be started! It seems like a very long wait but I should be able to get back into my lunar observing programme then. I was out last night imaging the ISS, just to keep my hand in with the scope but the cloud rolled in pretty quickly. Anyway Brian got to go..friends are coming over for a meal soon.

btw, I have access to skype now...still got to set up a user name but maybe it will be easier to catch up with you all that way? Say hi to Kate & the boys.

Take care,

Carol

[BKBrown]

Hi Carol! Glad to hear all is well with you and you are enjoying the festival season (Kate and Bren still speak fondly of it ). I have been too busy at work and covering my part of the obsy build to do much observing or imaging, but the weather has been pretty poor anyway. Hopefully we can both look forward to more scope time in the coming months. Please PM or e-mail me when you get your Skype address established, then we can do some serious catching up! Kate and Bren both say hi, enjoy the evening and I look forward to chatting soon...

Clear Skies, Brian

[BKBrown]

The sky finally cleared enough to polar align the Atlas so Thursday night was Beaglehaven First Light! I had to get through the alignment before I could go sight seeing, so I set to it as soon as it got dark. I decided to try the new Beta version of the Synscan software that is reportedly patterned on the Celestron alignment routine; Polaris not required. This is a good thing because Polaris is several degrees below my roof line and totally out of the picture. After downloading the software into one of my hand sets, I ran down the instructions and went to work. The instructions available on line were plenty concise enough to guide me through the process: rough alignment, 2 or 3 star regular alignment, check the feedback from the SW telling me how far off I was from the actual pole, adjust the elevation and azimuth bolts to center the target star in my reticle (I used Mizar and a 12mm Meade astrometric eyepiece with and without a 2x Barlow), hit the button for feedback and repeat as necessary. I started off by +3 degrees in elevation, and under 40" in azimuth (I am VERY pleased with the results of my sun shadow and compass checked pier plate orientation!), not too shabby actually. I quickly made my adjustments and ended up at 000° 11' 29" in elevation ("Mel") and 000° 01' 04" in azimuth ("Maz") after the first round. Being anxious to get some eyeball time in, I called that good for the night resolving to come back for future rounds to refine the alignment. One thing I noticed is that objects stayed at or near the center of my 9mm Nagler T6 for a long time despite some minor drift and this was good, but could be tightened up. What surprised me was that the GoTos weren't as good as they should be in my estimation. Guess I'll realign next time and refine the plotting model with several supplementary points. I did a bit of sight seeing after the alignment and Albireo, M57, and some other summer favorites somehow looked remarkably better viewed from an observatory. Who knew?

Clear Skies, Brian