[sac-forum] Re: Backyard Observing

Hi AJ,
Sorry to hear of your tale about the tail wrapped around that dawg !! First thing I would look at is the connections on >both ends< of the dec cable.... the extra strain may have loosened something.... then of course, the dec motor and an investigation of "that awful smell"... Hope you get it sorted out easily...
I went down to GRCO in Gilbert last night for the monthly EVAC "Second Friday" star party. I stayed around the dome and the 16 inch most of the evening. Good views of Mars, the Orion Nebula, and Saturn, and M42 again. We had about 165 people through the dome, and the other folks and scopes out in the north parking lot were busy, too. Martin Thompson has installed some more "goodies" around the dome -- this time a second PC monitor on the outside wall for folks to look out as they wait to get inside. He has a new video camera on order, too.
As I arrived early, I hiked along the west side trail in the Riparian Park and found (most of) the posts with the placques for the Solar System scale model (at least up to Saturn). (Earth is missing, unfortunately...) The Sun is depicted by a 6 inch diameter globe placed on top of the shade ramada south of the GRCO dome, and the other posts are arranged at scale distances accordingly.... 

Cheers,
Gene Lucas
(17250)

AJ Crayon wrote:
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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