[sac-forum] Re: Backyard Observing

Well, old buddy, I feel your pain and anxiety!  I got out with the C11
tonight and logged about 80 double stars (most of them 10th mag and fainter,
hornery cusses!), and three open clusters (hosts to some of the doubles I
tracked down).  Good night, but about 9:45, I began to get some pain in my
lower back, so time to head in.

 

Hope you get your scope fixed soon and that it is not TOO big of a disaster!

 

Dick

 

 

From: sac-forum-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:sac-forum-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of AJ Crayon
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 9:08 PM
To: SAC Forum
Subject: [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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