Dreams Deferred

Hi all,

The plan has been on indefinite hold for awhile now, my wants were bigger than my stomach and as a result I need to pay down some debt. I have also started to work on a new venture, as a result I am unable to acquire the things that I need to go on the first expedition.

Stay tuned though, hopefully I will be announcing a trip to Alamo Lake soon.

-Aaron

The next thing

So first light was a success, I was able to get a pretty good polar alignment and take some out of focus star images to run through WinRodder. For perspective here is a 1second black and white image of a star field from first light.

The bright star at the bottom of the frame is Vega.

I know what you're asking why would you want to take an image of an out of focus star. Well WinRoddier is software which attempts to reconstruct the wavefront of light coming through the telescope optics from Vega, the result is a reconstruction of the optical aberrations, or optical imperfections, of the mirror. In short this software will tell you if your optics are good, bad or mediocre.

Unfortunately I took images in TIFF format when I needed them in FITS format, the problem is that the software I used to operate the camera saves TIFF images in RBG (Red, Blue, Green) channel format, this results in the exact same data being written into all three channels.  Which lead me to have to go through a round of extracting the color channel data and then running it through WinRoddier.

Only to find that my aberrations were huge, not necessarily because the optics that were sent to me are bad but because I forgot about the first element in my optical system, the sky itself. Air pockets of different density refract light differently, and thus as you take an image the first lenses that light pass through are these air pockets in the sky, now from the above image I was able to measure the seeing, or the ammout of distortion caused by the atmosphere, its 2.68 arcseconds, which is not aweful (>5 arcseconds) but it sure as heck isn't good. (<1.5 arcseconds) The humidity on Monday night was high which probably contributed to the seeing. So now I need an artificial star to test my optics in doors.

Finally the software that I used with my camera is both old, and poorly designed, so I have now taken to working on a piece of software to replace it. But since have always claimed I wanted to write a Open Astronomical Image Processing software solution, now is as good a time as any to start. The code can be found at GitHub (in the Warp_Core1 directory) if anyone is interested in my next steps. It currently uses Visual Studio 2013 to compile.  

First Light

So it looks like I will be setting up my scope for the first time tomorrow night. I have added a section to the blog called Observing Plans. There is a plan for tomorrow night. There are a couple of reasons this process has taken a week longer than I had wanted it too. First, their was the weather which is annoying during the monsoon season here in Arizona.

The second is much more insidious, I was trying to find an open location which I could use as an observing site, however most parks in urban areas close earlier than one would like. So I had to call around to several parks departments, no one was willing to grant me a permit, I also called one golf course and the manager of operation literally could not get me off the phone fast enough.  It seems that we as a society are so afraid of our own shadow that a person cannot engage in a simple hobby without everyone losing the minds. 

Some would say that you should just set up your scope and not ask, well unfortunately we don't live in a perfect society so I would much rather play by the rules than chat with the police. The good news is Wagoner park is open until Midnight, sunset is ~7:30pm which means I should get a good 4 and 1/2 hours of work in before the night is out. 

Updates

Hi all,

I feel as if I owe the world an update, I know that sounds weird since I am under no obligation to write this blog regularlly. Anyways a few things have happened since my last post (in May) my car burnt to a cinder. So now I have my expedition vehicle  a 2014 Jeep Wrangler unlimited, the good news is this will eventually serve all my purposes, including going to Death Valley and Baja, however it will not be built out until I can pay it off, which is 72 months away. Until then we will have to plan to go to more hospitable locations.

The good news is that I have not been busy which means that I am building out my capacity to do astrophotography. Behold my latest creation:

This is the F/3.9 8" newt on a Orion Atlas EQ-G mount. Sitting in my brothers bedroom. It is not fully operational yet. I have done one iteration of balancing it and I have done a quick look at the colimation along with a first pass at collimating it:

The process is slow, I have been building some cables one which will allow me to control the mount directly via a USB interface using EQMOD. The other which is a serial release cable for my Canon SL1 camera. All in all progress is moving forward and we should at this rate be on track for Alamo Lake in Fall. (fingers crossed)

Busy

Hi Folks,

Its been awhile but mostly what I have been doing is working. If your a facebook friend you already know that I am below 300lbs. A lot has changed in these past few months, now that I have shrunk I have much more energy! This has lead to me becoming a Doer, the result is that I am currently working with a new laptop.

Now we are moving into the Plan. I am ordering a new telescope optical tube tomorrow, and updating my pinboard. The next month will be spent trying to secure the GEM for my mount. Along with birthday money I will hopefully have the telescope and mount in late June, then the fun begins.

My plan is to start in my back yard, setting up and tearing down the scope, using eyepieces to split doubles and star testing. I have found my old DSI Pro II not only works, but works in linux as well. I hope to turn it into a guide camera on my setup.

Once the mount and Telescope have been setup I am going to try and figure out how to start my camping setups, more than likely I am going to purchase a tent, after I have some of the big ticket astro imaging items done. I plan on doing a trip to Mt.Lemmon or something of the like in August, but we will have to see. In the fall though expedition one may go off.

In the mean time Stay tuned to the pinboard as Items are purchased they will go off the list.

A couple of more items, this saturday 5/04/2014 I would like to get a group together to talk about projects they are working on. I hope to make it an ongoing thing, which may become a club.

Also I have started a wiki, Exemplar Astronomiae its latin for a book of astronomy which is meant to be copied. I hope to put up tidbits of knowledge as well as some experiments people can do with telescopes from 5-42inches. Hopefully the experiments will be detailed enough that people can repeat them. There is a section for equipment as well, with instructions for various calibration and testing strategies. My hope is that others will eventually contribute but we will see.

Next Steps

So I am almost to the point of purchasing my laptop. My next purchase is going to be the OTA for my next telescope. Why the OTA first, because its on back order until June, so I need to order it now and get it while the getting is good. Next is the mount, followed by my camera modification. Then comes the fun part, each of the little individual components necissary to make my telescope work properly.

These range for the coma corrector to the laser collimator to reticle eyepieces to autoguiding setups. Not to mention I have to go to a wedding in August. Hopefully we are on track to do our first expedition next October, but we will have to see. I will post pics of my laptop when it comes in hopefully in a couple of weeks.

In the mean time I have created a website for the two aspects of my business, tutoring and computer repairs. It can be found at twedgec.com.

Running Behind

So the plan is proceeding, sort of. Right now I am saving up some money but unfortunately I am not prepping to buy a scope. The first thing I need to get is a new laptop. My current beast of burden has served me well, but its been worked too hard for too long. As a result my acquisitions are behind. My initial goal was to purchase the telescope and mount first followed by some camping gear so that I would be ready for the Grand Canyon Star party, now it looks like nothing will be happening until next fall.

If you are interested in what I am planning for a new laptop its a rather funny story, I am planning on getting a bare-bones kit and building it up myself. You can get them at rjtech.com with some $10 spudgers you can make yourself a laptop, it will be pretty heavy, however I am not noticing the girth of my old laptop as much now that I am getting healthier. I am hoping to order the laptop by mid April, once that is done I will hopefully have enough by mid-May to buy my scope, which may take a few months to get here.