[sac-forum] Backyard Observing

Well tonight I set up the 8" in my backyard.  After having avoided the cold for 
several weeks it was time to face it and get over this blockade.  It was rather 
cool during setup.

Once alignment started I was anxious to start my observing program.  Here are a 
few observations.

Sigma Ori - one of my favorite multiple stars with some nice color contrast

STF 790 - a very nice color contrast of orangish and very pale blue.

NGC2169 - an open cluster that looks like a "37".

At this time, with aimed in Orion and Auriga getting close to the meridian I 
decided to slew to gamma And in order to get to the other side of the meridian. 
 That is when disaster struck.

While slewing across the meridia the scope stopped, immediately followed by an 
awful buzzing sound and it wasn't anywhere near gamma And.  Everything was 
powered off.  An inspection turned up the declination cable was wrapped a round 
the RA shaft in a manner it wasn't designed and took out all of the slack.  It 
wasn't designed this way. Also, around this time, there was a faint awful smell 
of something burning.  Told you a disaster.  It gets worse.

Unhooking the cable and setting up to continue my observing program, it wasn't 
yet 9:00pm.  When Capella was selected as the first alignment star the scope 
slewed ONLY in RA.  Two other attempts at different stars produced the same 
result - slewing only in RA.  Could tell the scope was well aligned because 
Polaris stayed in the same place in the finder while moving in RA.

I'll inspect the declination motor over the weekend then discuss the situation 
with Orion.

Oh well, at least the telescope worked very well before the disaster and I got 
a taste of a little bit of observing.  Now I want MORE!!

Clear skies,
aj

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