Adventures in Commissioning an observatory

Sep04
by catz on September 4, 2021 at 09:52 and modified on September 4, 2021. at 10:11
Posted In: astronomy

I too spent a few hours last evening/night.

Mark had kindly repaired the JMI remote motofocus USB interface and it worked great! Having numbers to record for focusing with no barlow, x2, x2.5, x23 etc will be awesome!

The new cable that Mark built also works! Yay! My windows 10 laptop can now communicate with the Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 GT mount! Yay! It requires the ascom driver for “skywatcher telescope” however, not the “EQmodHEQ5/6″ that we had tried out earlier on the zoom session.. go figure!

So. I downloaded the latest PHD2 and installed it. No clear cut process to follow so I just turned it on, told it to use the primary camera (ASI290MC) and the scope with no barlows (1800mm) and it did some dark frame stuff.

I’ve been told that PHD2 will let me polar align the mount easily.. so that it what I was aiming for last night.

But first I had to park the scope at home, restart, do a 2 star alignment. On the first star (Arcturus) I had to use a 40mm eyepiece to find it as it was a few degrees off. Then I had to achieve focus. OK so far.

star #2 Dubhe. hmm don’t remember which one that was so cycled through the other 10-15 choices and did not even recognize most of them. Had to fire up stellarium to positively identify the star… and it had problems… it stalled on startup as it was fighting for telescope control with some other program … arrg.

Finally 10 minutes later I identify Dubhe as the last star in the Big Dipper dipper/bowl.

Align on it. ok. good align it says.

Then I try out the remote focuser to try and achieve the best focus possible. hmmm. not quite symmetric going in and out of focus. OK then. try the 8” bahtinov mask! Wow. The realtime result looks nothing like the sample images you see on the net. So another compromise and will use the best focus possible, which was not perfect.

OK them back to PHD2. Tools Polar drift align. ok.. it says move the scope to within 6 deg of polaris. Wow.. every try to get a scope to go to polaris when it is equatorial? It just did not want to. So down on the ground looking through the newly aligned telrad to get it within 1/2 degree. ok. PHD says pick a star. I did. click on start, wait for awhile, click on stop then physically move the mount in RA and Dec to put the seleted star into the circle at the end of the line. Hmmm the line goes offscreen and there is no circle. Tried to drive the scope with the hand controller.. nope.. other issues.

try again and physically move the mount.. still no circle and no end of line. Hmmm.

read through the online help again.. still nothing.

I am wondering if it requires a much lower power setup, ie not the primary 1800mm FL of the primary scope but something much wider field of view? It talks to the camera and mount and gets info from them to calculate a field of view and to tell me where to move the mount to in the end. I don’t think it will work on the mallincam video output of the actual finder/guide scope and the frame grabbing usb adapter in the middle.

But I may have to try that i nthe future.

So.. failure on the PHD2 front. )@#$& this lets get some Jupiter images. Tell the hand controller to go to Jupiter, it misses by a few degrees. arrgg. Doesn’t matter.. its getting late and I just want some image runs.

Center Jupiter with the eyepiece, then the camera. wooho.. Jupiter.. long time no see.

hmmm.. seems to be moving awfully fast… tracking is pretty bad. Try a reduced region of Interest (about 600×600 pixels) and the best I can do is about 30 seconds.

OK.. using firecapture I invoke the “autoguiding” feature that I used to use with the Meade LX200GPS, where firecapture would track the centered object and issues commands to the mount and keep it centered.

30 minutes later, everything I tried failed… will have to spend a lot of time reading manuals again and experimenting with variables (options not stars). So I took a few more 60 seconds runs at full resolution and called it a night.

Ooops! Forgot to do the one thing I set out to this evening… try to polar align the scope with the polar axis eyepiece. OK.. nice red LED inside.. the handcontroller can change the brightness. awesome.

Looks for the big dipper (not easy when lying on the deck, glasses off, eye glued to the bottom of the mount essentially. I discovered that the pier should have been a few inches higher, just for this)

Look for Cassie, rotate the template to match approx by eye. (next time I do this again I will use the actual RA numbers and dial in the template much more accurately). ok.. loosen the clutches.. hmm which star is Polaris?

loosen the mount and physically rotate it.. I see a star? Is it polaris? who knows.. we are going to use it anyway!

OK. move the mount in RA and Dec to put the star in the circle. Done!

tighten clutches and mount. ( I think I did that). Shutdown and go inside.

Phew!

What a night. Now processing maybe 6 imaging runs of Jupiter.. will see how they look.

No mosquitos, watched the CFL game Montreal at Ottawa in the observatory.. Nice!

Next time!

a more accurate polar align with the polar eyepiece method. Learn the stars around polaris first!

Get some paper star maps! Do a 3 star align! Park it and restart it and goto anywhere. Are we even close?????

If so start looking in more detail at PHD2 mount alignment. Try it again maybe. Try it again with the mallincam finder/guider.

Start looking at using software to command and control and move the mount to targets. See how accurate it is.

Personally I would like it to find Jupiter in the full field of view of the camera without me hunting for it.

And the initial results from a lot of bad conditions, including:

Jupiter was still a few hours away from maximum altitude/zenith.

Jupiter was effectively in the Kingston SkyDome

seeing was average

transparency was below average

Quick processing run… will get better with practice.

All were initially and mistakenly process with only the first 2500 frames.

Io and Europa showed up after the registax processing. Nice!

This is the animated 6 runs over say about 20 minutes.

I predict that when I have time to reprocess this in tomorrows RAIN that it will be much better!

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SCGO Serenity Observatory Renovation 2021-Part2 – Deck

Aug25
by catz on August 25, 2021 at 20:26 and modified on August 25, 2021. at 20:30
Posted In: life the universe and everything


The plan was to build a raised deck, high enough up for very good ventilation and high enough not to be shelter for critters.
Crushed gravel went in first, followed by a 1″ 12″x12″ patio stone followed by two stacked deck blocks. A small 2×2 was installed in the deck blocks to keep them aligned and together.
The pier was backfilled with dirt. The deck was built from 2x6x10′, 16″ on center except at the end where the pier was.


Blocks were added between the joists for more stability.

The deck supports were cantilevered in a touch so as to distribute the load better, and to help avoid stubbings ones feet at the end of the deck.
We also then added a layer of cloth to prevent critters from coming up between the decking, which was spaced to allow for air to come in and rain to go down and through.


5/4×6 PT decking was added and many measurements were taken to move onto the next steps.

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SCGO Serenity Observatory Renovation 2021-Part1 – Pier

Aug25
by catz on August 25, 2021 at 20:17 and modified on August 25, 2021. at 20:19
Posted In: life the universe and everything


We had have piers made from 2×6 wood in a box format, anchored in concrete and filled with sand. They rotted in about 10 years and were never really stable! So this time we were going for fullon concrete. Since our soils is about 3-5″ of peat then into solid fractured rock, we opted to get a bigfoot concrete form and then a sonotube to extend it upward to the height we wanted.
Height was a very difficult thing to calculate as there were many variables with nknown error bars: an uncertain depth of hole, our sonotube was 8.5″ and would fit inside the bigfoot after it was filled and it was uncertain if the sonotube could go all the way down. The deck would be raise quite a ways up off the rock but it also had crushedgravel, a patio stone and then two stacked deck blocks. So we tried to design with a lot of give/slack/room for errors.


So the BF28 bigfoot went into the ground. It was weighed down with deck blocks to make sure it did not float away.
7 bags of concrete (just add water) 30kg each were mixed one at a time in this tray.
It was tiring work and about 1 hour of time. We had prepared three threaded rods with a wooden adapter and nuts and bolts to and placed them inside the concrete and placed a 2×4 across the top to hold it in place.

This was the end result of the pier (ignore the deck.. that is decsribed in the next part).

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SCGO Serenity Observatory Renovation 2021

Aug25
by catz on August 25, 2021 at 19:59 and modified on August 25, 2021. at 20:05
Posted In: astronomy


This is the original Serenity Observatory at SCGO circa 2020 January. It is located out in the back lowlands which often are quite wet. We have been adding an earth berm over time to be able to walk out there without getting sopping wet feet. It was a stationary building with a flipopen roof.
All of the walls and roof were made with 5/8″ OSB and it did not weather well in the wet with only paint protection. So, plastic was added to the roof and building wrap to the walls and doors.


This is the 102mm Meade Schmidt Cass telescope that was inside the observatory on a Meade LXD55 mount. The observatory was designed with remote imaging in mind, not visual. Having said that, I would have to get inside the 4’x4′ box to fix, align, adjust, etc.

Then, after 20 years of looking and saving, a new telescope and mount came my way.
The Skywatcher AZ-EQ6GT mount and the Vixen VC200L 200mm f9 scope were immediately installed and .. they were too big! There was even less room than before to get inside to adjust and fiddle.

So the decision was made to build a new observatory for the new equipment. We wanted to build a huge observatory for two.. say 8’x14′ or so, but then the price of lumber quadrupled! So that was outside of the budget. In addition we wanted to go with a pier and a “miniobservatory design”. We’ve had a microobservatory before, which was just a small box on a pier over the scope.
Here with the mini observatory we wanted to reuse the existing 4×4 structure in a roll off building and allow it to be used as a warm control room. Once everything is setup, then it can be used remotely.

This is the end result:

The next few articles will cover the detailed steps on how we built this and why we made the design choices we did.

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Saturn 2021 July 30

Aug01
by catz on August 1, 2021 at 11:59 and modified on August 1, 2021. at 11:59
Posted In: astronomy

This is one of a few imaging runs of Saturn taken Friday evening. The new mount is still not polar aligned, so there was more drift than I was happy with. This is the first time the x2 antares barlow was used. Focus is still quite soft (I still do not have a full length extension on the electric focus controller) and that will get better.

Again, the camera would not come to focus with the x2 barlow, but it did with the 90 deg diagonal. So I am still all confused up as to orientation, flipx flipy choices. I had to go into stellarium to see what Saturn should look like and edit it after the fact.

This was a 240 second run with 60ms exposures. The best 25% of 3970 frames were used. I love the scale of 3600mm focal length… Saturn is actually larger than a pinprick!

So, altitude was still very low and Saturn was still in the Kingston SkyDome… so this again is a benchmark image, where future ones can only get better 🙂

Also attached is an image from Allsky1pi (with its new wider angle lens) camera system actually showing Saturn at the same time as the telescopic image was taken, approx 22:53 EDT Friday evening. Saturn is 19deg altitude and is located centrally in the Kingston SkyDome. If I had better prepared with a nap, I could have gotten up around 02:00 or 03:00 when it would have cleared the light pollution.

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Jupiter 2021July24

Jul25
by catz on July 25, 2021 at 20:02 and modified on July 26, 2021. at 08:12
Posted In: astronomy

“It’s been a long time.. gettin from there to here” – Star Trek Enterprise

More specifically related to astronomy… my first substantial mount and telescope are here installed and working.
The SCGO Serenity Observatory was renovated to allow them to be used, and the first light was this morning, Saturday, between 03:00 and 05:00 EDT.

The Mount is a newtome used Skywatch AZ-EQ6GT in equatorial mode, sitting on a brand new concrete pier, and a newtome used Vixen VC200L, a 200mm f9 cassegrain telescope.
The ZWO ASI290MC camera I have had for a few years now, but was only using it on a small 102mm Schmidt Cass telescope.

This is the first light image, a 30 second run with Firecapture (no autoalign) on the mount which has not yet been polar aligned or three star aligned, just roughly polar aligned by eye in the daytime and manually driven to Jupiter. It had 2975 frames and stacked with Autostakkert! 3.1.4 and the best 5% of the frames were used. (about 150).
Regixtax wavelet processing was next where the rgb colour was balanced as well.

Annotation of the 25 images that resulted followed, and then they were combine into an animated .gif image, seen below.
All in all, a great first light. Seeing was good, transparency was poor (the Full Moon was nearby), focus was rough (using an electric remote focuser hand controller for the first time, at some distance from the display).

Tracking was excellent for a mount that had not yet been really setup. The next run will be even better from lessons learned Saturday morning.
Image exposure increased over the 95 minute session, probably due to brightening twilight sky.
Near the end, at an 11ms exposure, a Jovian moon makes an appearance.

This was the baseline imaging session, with the native F9 focal ratio. barlows will come next in the progression.
Interestingly, the asi290mc camera does not come to focus with the telescope. a 90 deg diagonal was used to bring the focusing point further out, as will a barlow.

animated 25 frames GIF

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Allsky1pi camera system update

Jul05
by catz on July 5, 2021 at 16:55
Posted In: astronomy

The Allsky1pi camera system is slowing coming back to normal. It stopped working a few weeks back, from a suspected overheating of the camera and the raspberry pi. The housing was cut open and an open mesh was installed at the bottom to allow for better airflow.
Configuration files were also changed and changed back and changed again.
Last nights run was reasonably successful, back up to 60 second exposures with no moon up, one image every 60 seconds, and the sensor temperature not wildly obscene.

Still to come are more and better dark frames and to figure out some way to automate dark frame processing into the system, based on the sensor temperature.
That should really clean up the hot pixels.

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Jupiter 2021July05

Jul05
by catz on July 5, 2021 at 16:50
Posted In: astronomy

This is the best image from this mornings run of Jupiter, from 03:58-4:40 EDT.
Meade LXD55 Mount, Meade 102mmSC fl=1000 plus a x2 barlow and the ZWO ASI 290MC camera
180 seconds of imaging run at 13ms exposures for about 13500 total frames.
Processed the best 25% of them with autostakkert!3 and registax for this image of Jupiter and its moon Callisto.
My annotation system is in ruins, so no annotation on the image today. North is up rotation is left to right.
Seeing was poor, transparency was poor.
Possibly, for the first time *ever*, I think I may have used dark frames to help process this. It’s hard to tell with firecapture… I took dark frames but am then unsure if firecapture itself subtracted them away from the realtime light frames or not. The dark frames got stored as .dark files that do not look like any image file format I have seen, and autostakkert! cannot load them in as dark frames. Ditto for flat frames. took them.. don’t know if they got used or not, again stored as .flat file types that cannot be imported into firecapture.

Just went through the firecapture video tutorials and did not come across any useful info

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Today’s Adventures at Starlight Cascade Garden’s

Jun22
by kim hay on June 22, 2021 at 11:05
Posted In: gardening

Well the beans have disappeared again!

The Tendergreen, Sungold Wax and even the Scarlet Runner beans have the leaves missing. So if the baby bunny can squeeze itself out of the chain link fence in the back yard, is it fair to say that it can squeeze itself into the Garden’s of 4& 5 to enjoy the fresh leaves?

There will be some screening going over all the beans. This is the first year we have had this issue.

Two hard shell potato bugs found and terminated and one patch of eggs- smooshed.

Picking up debris from yesterday’s wind storm.

Will be weeding more grass from the flower beds.

But on the bright side I did get some mulberries from the tree, but now have to get them before the squirrels, who were seen this morning on the top of the tree enjoying a fruit breakfast.

 

 

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ISS transit of the Moon 2021May20

May28
by catz on May 28, 2021 at 10:23
Posted In: astronomy

This is my *single* frame capture of the ISS transit of the moon on Thursday 2021 May 20th at 23:58:08 UTC.

The ISS is the little lighter blotch in the lower left of the frame. You can imagine two major solar panel components.

If we had better cameras with bigger FOV sensors/pixels, lower focal length of the scope or a better predicted path over the moon itself, I would have framed this and capture many more frames as it crossed.

Specs: Meade 102mm SchmidtCass FL=1000 f10 on a Meade LXD55 mount captured with zwo asi290mc camera with firecapture software. Focus was manual of the primary SC mirror using the Yoga “warrior” pose, reaching into the toosmall observatory, under the counterweights, around the camera and finally to the coarse focus knob

Processing: load up the .avi in irfanview image viewer, select options; extractallframes. It turned the 1242 frames into 1242 .bmp files. I then went through them one by one to identify the single ISS frame and kept one before and one after and deleted the rest. Then with irfanview again, changed them from .bmp to .jpg and then annotated with irfanview.. wow.. that program is becoming my goto software!

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drip irrigation is pretty awesome

May26
by catz on May 26, 2021 at 11:32 and modified on May 26, 2021. at 14:12
Posted In: gardening, Heirloom & Heritage Tomatos


This is our drip irrigation system that we bought last year (kit form), just laid out a week ago when we transplanted the heirloom tomatos. This year the plants are 24″ apart and the rows are 36″ apart. We would like more spacing between rows but the fenced garden is not big enough for the number of plants going in.
There is a mechanical timer associated with this vegbed and typically we come out in the morning or evening and turn it on for 1 or 2 hours.
All of the supplies came from irrigationdirect.ca


Other components are a vaccuum breakers, a filter, and a pressure reducer. The system worked very well last year and so far so good this year. You can tell by the narrow strips of wet earth that it is much more efficient in getting water to plants than a sprinkler and much more conventient than hand watering with a hose and nozzle.

Lastly yet another signage system. In past years we would staple these laminated laser printed names onto a 2×2 stake, which also supported the tomatos. This year we are not putting in the 2×2 stakes right away, rather later on when the plants are well established and much larger. So instead we tried this… gluing the names on popsicle sticks for now, and transferring them to the 2×2 later on… still haven’t quite worked out how that will work, but at least the letters are running left to right instead of sideways uptodown as in the past 🙂

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spring gardens

May20
by catz on May 20, 2021 at 10:39 and modified on June 18, 2021. at 10:42
Posted In: gardening, garlic


A quick snap of Vegbed5 for historical records… Approx 960 garlic cloves were planted on 2020 October 25 & 28 in the eastern section (left side of image). Potatos went in to the southern section (center of image).
The black composter was moved in about a month ago to provide ease of access and maybe it would get more use.
The garlic was covered with straw for the winter. We will be removing it shortly to lay out the drip irrigation lines and may put it back again soon afterward.

vegbed5 north to south east to west +5C
Row 1 Oct 25 50 dibbles * 6 = 300 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
armenian x2
artichoke x3
barcelona red x1
bubbas chesnock x1
carpathian x1
chesnock red x1
chilian x1
creme delarose x1
czech x2
dujanski x1
F3V x2
Fishlake Ted F1 x2
Fishlake Ted F21 x3
Fishlake Ted F23 x6
Fishlake Ted F3 x4
Fishlake Ted F30 x8
Fishlake Ted F40 x2
Fishlake Ted F7 x2
French x2
unknown x1
genki x2
georgia crystal x1
georgia fire x1

Row 2 Oct 25 51 dibbles * 6 = 306 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
georgian x2
german red x2
german white x2
hungarian x2
inchileum x3
italian purple x3
italian sicilian x2
japanese
japanese sikua
khabar
koji
korean purple
kosytns red russian
lakota
lucian sicilian x2
magnificent
marino x2
mennenite x6
metechi
music x4
newfoundland x2
northern quebec x4
northumberland x2
omas
persian star
phillipino
polish jenn

row 3 oct 28 44 dibbles * 6 = 264 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
port au george x2
purple glazer x3
railway creek x4
roja 2019FA x2
rose de la trec x2
rosewood x2
blank russian red check notes
russian red x2
russian red 2019 x2
saltsrping select x2
seversky palisek x2
shouldice
siberian marble
sicilian gold x3
silverskin40 x4
slovak x3
solent wight
spanish antihelion x3
spicy korean x2
sweet candy x2

vegbed7 early garlic (planted apart from main crop) 8 dibbles * 6 = 48 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
aglio russo creo x1
acropolis greek x1
chiliean silver x2
italian lorenz x2
mexican red silver x2

vegbed10 last of early garlic (planted apart from main crop) 7 dibbles * 6 = 42 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
red rezan x3
spanish roja x3
tibetan x1

Grand Planting Total 2020 = 300 + 306 + 264 + 48 + 42 = 960

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