Hummel Observatory

[Octane]

Hi all,

Well, after many years, my dream has come true.

The pier went in last Saturday, and, I had some machining done during the week to fit the pier head to the pier.

I had the day off work today so went about setting everything up.

As you can see from the pictures, it's a bit of a cable mess, but, that's part of the joy of this hobby, I guess.

The total height from base to tip of the FS-60CB is 2 metres. I think I will be parking the system on its side.

Once I've got some funds, I will start building the actual observatory itself.

I asked my beautiful wife what we should call our observatory. She suggested Hummel; a portmanteau of the first syllables of both our names (Humayun and Melanie). I thought, why not? :)

So, anyway, attached are a couple of pictures taken with my iPhone, showing how it looks at the moment. I will be going outside shortly to load up PEMPro and do a polar alignment and then finesse it with a drift. :)

Thanks for looking!

H

[ZeroID]

Wow, rapid progress !! Well done H.
I see what you mean about 'cable mess' though. I'm using some Velcro strips to keep mine a bit tidier and save me catching on them when I'm moving around.
I presume all the gear will come off and goes inside when you finish each night. ? Till you build the Ob of course.

[Asterix2020]

Looks good!

[DJDD]

i saw the first photo and thought, "what cable mess?". then i looked at the next photo. :lol:

are the neighbours going to trim their foliage?

[MrB]

Looking good H!
On your post to The Photographer's Den on FB, you mention you are leaving the gear out while sleeping then you cover it up in the morning and that you will be getting a cloud/rain sensor when you have the obs set up.
Can't you get the cloud/rain sensor now? It could be set up to wake you up if there is any rain so you can sprint out in your undies and cover the gear up ;)

[Manav]

Wow that looks great!

[Octane]

Brent,

Cheers!

I've used cable ties and Velcro everywhere. It looks a tiny bit better now. A lot of the power cords look messy as they're all curled up and stuffed inside the rat cage assembly. Once the housing is built, then, that should clean up... or, at least I hope!



Paul,

Cheers! :D



DJDD,

The cables are one of the reasons why I can't be bothered with going to star parties anymore. It is such a headache. I do miss the days of DSLR imaging. It was just a couple of cables and I was sorted. Not so much, anymore!

The missus has a chainsaw. We might lop the bits that are hanging into our yard. It will free up my view to the south a little bit, too. Might be able to see the south celestial pole, then!



Simon,

I didn't even think about getting the weather system first. You've put money-spending ideas into my head, now! I think I will go for the AAG CloudWatcher solution. It seems like a cost-effective (kind of) solution.



Yugant,

Thank you! In fact, your pier project was the impetus for me to finally buy and start setting up. It just so happened that Lewis had the perfect pier for sale and I snapped it up. :)



I spent some time aligning the other night with PemPro's polar alignment routine. Got down to within 15 arcseconds for azimuth and 35 arcseconds for altitude, over a 10-minute period. I can make tiny adjustments to azimuth, but, the altitude knob on the G-11 has a lot of backlash (part and parcel of a tangent arm design, I guess). I'm hoping that that's close enough to the pole for imaging. :)

H

[leon]

H, the Tak dose look good up there mate.

Leon

[Octane]

Leon, after all those years, I finally opened the box with the pier heads in them. I'm so glad to finally make use of them. :)

H

[leon]

Really, that dose surprise me, but i suppose there was no pier to put them on until now, hope it all comes together for you.
I had better have an other look at those pics you posted

Leon

[frenchbluehour]

Hi there,

Awwwww..... awesome Humayun,



Good work and glad to see :)


Nic
x

[SkyViking]

Hi H, that's fantastic, congratulations mate! :)
It makes such a difference to have gear mounted permanently. :thumbsup:

[Octane]

Hey, Nic! Good to see you pop your head in here. x :)

Thanks, Rolf! The last week was pretty great, except, for the Moon.

My old RoboFocus was giving me consistent focus, however, for whatever reason, the best focus position number kept changing. So, if I started focus at 2,000, the next time I ran a focus routine (on the same filter), it would change to 1,800. Eventually, once it gets to 0, RoboFocus barfs that it's run out of travel. I've tried altering the step size and the pause, as well as the duty cycle. I think there may be a mechanical issue with the motor itself. I bought JohnG's RoboFocus and installed it on the weekend. Dying to test this install, but, the clouds haven't let up! Tonight's my missus' birthday, so, no chance of getting out, even for a little bit, haha. :)

It's all very exciting, though.

Cheers, all.

H

[LewisM]

H, I found a Robofocus made bracket to mount their motor to the FSQ106 if you need it. I have nil use for it.

[Octane]

Hey, Lewis. Thanks for thinking of me!

Unfortunately, the bracket for the FSQ-106ED is slightly different to the FSQ-106N.

I took delivery of JohnG's old RoboFocus last week and tried installing it on the weekend (he still had the motor on the bracket), but, it didn't fit; the slots are in the wrong area for the screw on the rack/pinion housing.

I just took his motor off, and put it on my old bracket, and, it went straight on.

H