Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
Wow excellent stuff, so you can adjust both tip and tilt of the camera and the collimation, remotely?? wow  sounds a little fiddly, do they need tweaking often?
How awesome is that "el Capitan"!   ....did yo know I got myself an AP1600GTO  It's also awesome, I don't even use PEC and only polar aligned with the RA polar scope and it guides even better than the NJP did, Astrophyiscs make some nice kit
Good to have you back, don't be a stranger
Mike |
No Mike, no need to keep adjusting the collimation or the planarity of the camera
However both of these activities are quite time consuming (in particular the planarity adjustment) but absolutely necessary at f/3.8! When I first mounted the camera on the Gemini focuser/rotator I got a lot of issues on the latter and eventually got the tip-tilt done. Now despite still it takes time to adjust everything, this can be done comfortably watching the monitor from everywhere I am, plus the adjustments are fully measured and repeatable, meaning I can get a very precise alignment at the end of the process. If I had the scope in my backyard I would probably just done all the adjustments manually, investing few nights until I got a satisfactory alignment, but having the equipment installed so remotely it is a great bonus to have everything controllable over the internet
OS told me they also integrated some tip-tilt sensors into the secondary support, with the idea to make a fully automatic collimation and perhaps mapping and correct for any differential flexure it may occur at different pointing angles, however I believe they never actually developed the software since the structure is very rigid and strong enough to guarantee the alignment to be kept at any angle even with heavy loads.. At least at the moment I am using the secondary computerized "tripod" support to focus and it works great
About the mount, it is great and yes, tracking is very good. I bought it together with the dome and the rest of the observatory secondary equipment from the former owner, which used to have a TEC180 on it. I basically sold my old dome (2.3 meter, I believe like yours) and purchased this one (3.5m) that was just beside mine, that was coincidentally for sale at the same time.. The 3600 has even the absolute encoder installed on RA but I have to say I am still not using it, tracking is good enough and I want to make sure everything else is working well before adding further variables..
Last, considering the weight of the OTA (about 100Kg with the camera and accessories!), ElCapitain payload is a very good match
Happy to be back too mate
Ciao
Marco