Thursday observing

Feb10
by kevin on February 10, 2012 at 12:33 and modified on February 12, 2012. at 17:53
Posted In: astronomy

For the first time in simply ages! we had time and weather and temperature and no clouds all at the same time.. enough to go outside and take a quick peak around the skies.
Venus was in the southwest with Uranus less than 1/2 degree away from it. We spotted it quickly in the 20cm dobsonian telescope.
Jupiter was high up in the south with Callisto off to one side and Io, Europa and Ganymede on the other side.
Mars and the Moon would be rising together in another hour or so but it was cold and windy and we packed it in as it was getting to be a late dinner.

We also worked on the LX200 and the new netbook computer connected to it.
The old computer blew a hard drive that we could not replace so it has been out of service for the last two months.
Software was installed for the Meade autostar suite from the LPI camera disk.
Time to move up to the DSI camera. Ran the install software from the DSI camera, installed the huge GSC catalog, the dotnet framework and then the camera drivers. it removed the lpi drivers first then installed the dsi drivers. It completed, rebooted and restarted. We hooked the DSI camera in, had to install the serial-usb adapter software as well and presto! Up came autostar suite. We confingured the usb-serial adpater for com2, told autostar suite com2 and connected to the telescope. Yay
Then we asked it for the DSI imager.. It is hard to tell if the (used) camera works or not. There was a lot of noise that moved around in the live view. We tried various exposures, no change, no image. Maybe it was broken?
Replaced the DSI with the old LPI and lost connection to the telescope as well.
Rebooted the computer, got telescope connection back but only errors and no live images when bringing up the lpi imaging software. Bummer. Venus is now almost behind the house.
Remove the LPI put in the DSI and try again. Now there are a bunch of errors and no live image. Arrg.
turn it all off, pack it up, go inside and have a hot drink.
Maybe try again inside with the cameras.

From what I could tell, using the meade autostar suite v3.18 that came with the DSI camera, we should be able to control the telescope AND run either of the cameras.