Slewing Problem Resolved

I rang Grant Christie today to let him know about the unhealthy noise the mount has been making when slewing, he let me know that the problem was probably due to me having to home the scope during the T - Point calibration run, apparently doing so changes two of the parameters of the pointing model and can cause problems, so I went out to Kumeu tonight to clear the pointing model to see if this would fix the slewing problem and I'm very happy to report that the slewing of the mount is now back to sounding healthy again, I also finally figured out how to connect the CCD to the Sky X, the reason I was getting error messages was that you can't have the camera connected to Maxim DL and the Sky X at the same time, up until now the first thing I used to do when I arrived at the observatory was to connect the camera to Maxim DL so I can turn on the camera's coolers as it takes a while for the camera to cool down, I know now this was the reason why I was getting no response from the camera when attempting to connect to it through the Sky X, I'm feeling a little bit sheepish that it took me so long to figure this out but I guess it's all part of the learning process to have a bit of trial and error.

Unfortunately the sky was pretty cloudy out at Kumeu tonight, I did take a few images using the Sky X to control the CCD but I failed to astrometrically solve the images, this was probably due to the images being affected by clouds, hopefully the next time it's clear I will be able to do a new pointing model using an automated calibration run, I plan to take two to three hundred samples of the sky so we will end up with a very robust pointing model, I stayed out at Kumeu until 10:30 but the sky seemed to be getting worse and with the internet not working ( another problem that needs to be addressed soon ) I had no way to know if it was worth waiting around to see if it would clear up, so heading home a bit frustrated that I couldn't get more done tonight I had to console myself that at least when the next opportunity presents itself the telescope and mount are ready for action again.

Posted by Jonathan Green