[AEAJR (Ed)]

9/4/16 - 9-10:30 pm * ETX 80 and Reveloution Imager R2.

This is not really much of a report. The skies were not very clear. Seemed like a thin cloud layer overhead and thicker clouds along the horizon. Things were very dull and obscured. * But I did play with the new video system.

From my failed attempt the other day I realized that I needed to work on space management and come up with places to put things. So first thing I did was make a shelf that hooks onto the tripod. This gives me a little working space. This worked extremely well. If you have a scope on a stable tripod you might want to make one of these. Mine is made of 5/16" ply wood with a 1X2 stiffener across teh bottom that sits against the legs of the tripod. Very stable.

Then I just blindly pointed the scope into Cassiopeia with no tracking just to play with the camera and settings. I did put on the IR filter but not the focal reducer. I was able to get it into focus and just watched stars go through the field of view as I played with the settings. So, it works!

As I said, the sky was lousy, so this was just a "getting used to the equipment" time. One thing I can see is that when I am working with this video system I will want to plan my observations so that I am focused on a particular part of the sky. With all these wires I would not want the scope swinging through vast arcs as I hunted at random/

So far all I can report is that it works. Can't yet say whether this will be a valued addition to my astronomy equipment, but it looks promising. And the shelf works great!