[Paul Haese]

Tuesday night I went down to the obs and had a plan to work more on NGC6357 and maybe do Omega Centauri while waiting for the former to rise.

Murphy had other plans though. It seems that separated oil from the worm gear had rolled down the back of the RA gear again and got caught in the homing sensor. This PME has tested my patience and continues to do so. To clean the homing sensor I had to disturb the polar alignment by moving the altitude to its upper most limit. I then pulled the motor off and cleaned the gear and sensor, well at least I thought so. I put it all back together and did a PA tpoint model three times to get alignment and then start a larger model for pointing only for the mount to stop again when it crossed the meridian. I then repeat the procedure of cleaning and once again do another model only for the mount to stop again. On the fourth occassion I was quietly seething. Peter who was visiting was most helpful in holding the torch and got to see first hand what the bowels of a PME looks like. In the end I got the entire gear clean again (I do wonder if this will happen again next year after our hot summers) and even got my PA better than before with Hadar falling dead center of the image and even got 3 hours of data on the Eagle Nebula.

This Ha image is a 100% crop of the central part of the image. Lots more data will be needed to complete the image as a combine of the OIII and SII is quite noisey, however for now I am glad of the mount to be working and pointing well.