Ever have one of those nights?

[pvelez (Pete)]

I had a sniff at about 5pm that the clouds may stay away, so I set up, used the pencil marks on the deck from Thursday night as a guide and aligned quickly and then slewed to my target -NGC 3311 - all while cooking the roast beast on the barbie for the family feast.

All good - wanted to avoid the aggravation of guiding with Maxim so switched on PHD. Nice and solid guiding. Off we go.

And then it all went downhill. After 2 images the mount stopped responding. Took 10 minutes to work out there was no power. Why? I'd used the power from the pool filter box and it was on a timer set to turn off after 6pm.

Restart, align, start guiding - won't work.Wrestle with the mount, change balance, change aggressiveness settings etc. Still no good. Do a meridian flip - lovely tight guiding. Great.

Then the dew on the CCD window starts.

Raise the temp, let it sit, wander inside for a bit and try not to stew.

Back to it and - lost guide star. Of course the clouds have rolled in. Not big ones, just faint whispy high level cloud that you might not notice without a telescope.

Unpack, lug it all inside, notice the serious dew for the first time (am glad I didn't zap myself somehow!) and then realise that the building dust from home renos have infiltrated the scope - with the dew on the primary, the mirror looks like its coated in a thin layer of mud.

The bride has already finished the bottle of wine so no solace there.

And yet....




at 7am tomorrow I'll be checking the weather reports to see if there is likely to be a cloudless night tomorrow night.

Damn this addiction!!

Pete

[Robh (Rob)]

Pete,

Nicely recounted and something all of us here can relate to.
The night sky will keep enticing us back for those intoxicating moments that make us forget the frustrations of the last time out.

Regards, Rob

[BlackWidow (Mardy)]

Well Peter you were not alone. I have been trying to get my head around alignment and using PHD. The best thing was to spend the last two weeks getting PHD to work with my SPC900nc webcam and my LX200.. Had it all in the bag so last night it was time to get and image with guiding for the first time... NOT SO!

I could not get the scope aligned for love or money. When I thought I had a good alignment the scope was off every time I slewed to objects. Once I seemed to have got it I slewed to Eta for some shots only to find that I was dropping frames on PHD and it would not track. I spent the next 3 hours trying every setting under the sun . Buy the time I thought I was getting near to fixing it the scope and camera were full of dew. Out with the 12 volt dryer and we tried again,, then the computer decided to hang and do odd things that made PHD crash several times. Hmmmm

Another 1/2 hour trying to get the computer to do as it should ended up in a scene from the Roswell Case. The computer crash landed in the middle of the lawn with cables hanging out of it.. Wooops!

Packed it all up, picked up the pieces and went to bed.. Had a look at what damage I had placed on the laptop this morning to find that nothing was damaged and bugger me but the laptop seems to be working fine again. Nothing wrong with a bit of percussive maintenance...

Still somehow I do enjoy this hobby and will go back out tonight to give it another try. If you guys and gals can do it, I see no reason why I can't... (Be Nice LOL). I will get that nice photo sooner or later..


Mardy

[pvelez (Pete)]

It's a funny thing - the dust that looked well and truly caked on my primary last night has mysteriously vanished this am.

Now for the rain to stop

I love the idea of percussive maintenance. Looks like it did the trick for you

Pete

[keni (Ken)]

Hi Peter and Martin,
I can sympathise and feel your pain.
Another sad story here.
I spent a lot of Friday setting up my ED80 and guide scope on a new side by side plate I have. I got it all aligned, balanced and set it up outside ready for a clear night.
While relaxing late in the arvo I heard a storm warning and had a look outside. Rats dark clouds rolling in so I packed everything away. After dinner had a look outside and WOW no clouds. Mad dash downstairs to set up again. All set up started to do alignment.....1st star done, 2nd star done, hang on where did everything go???? That sneaky wispy cloud had snuck in and was everywhere.I'm going to remain positive and say at least the setup/pack away practice is great. But I'm not fooling anyone. At least I got to grab a beer to calm me down.

Saturday night was a repeat performance. Although the SWC ( sneaky wispy clouds ) blew in earlier before I powered anything up so I wasted less time then.
I guess to look on the "bright" side I think I can compete in the International "setup and take down scope comp for frustrated Astronomers" with some chance of winning......unless I go GAGA and kick it all over...

Rob,
I agree the frustration is soon forgotten with the next good night.......I just hope it comes soon.

Ken.