Observatory: Going live: Lessons learned:

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Saturday: 32F. A clear night with Saturn sinking out of sight to the SW and Mars keen to follow. The Moon was still a bright glow rising in the East.

First frost as the clocks go back after a first attempt to use the observatory. Early sunshine replaces a late moon. 

I started up the laptop and AWR, Stellarium and even downloaded a new version of Stellarium Scope to see if that helped. It is so long since I used this equipment and software that I had completely forgotten the basics.

The telescope was accepted by Stellarium and was "Started" but Ctrl 1 had no slewing effect. Neither the cursor was identified nor was the blue LED on the FTD cable showing any sign of life. I think there may be a problem with my laptop having only USB3 ports. I had an error message in Windows when I checked the com port 3 fitted with the cable. Checked again and "the device is recognized and working properly."

So I manually slewed to Mars and tried a few eyepieces. Mars was colourful but not remotely clear.
Fighting the resistance of the wormwheel clutches made it very difficult to point the telescope! 

By then it was 8pm and dinner time. So I switched everything off and returned indoors. After doing some quick checking online I realised that I hadn't been offered a choice of telescope in ASCOM. More after dinner.

A couple of hours later I was still trying to get Stellarium to show that ASCOM was present. I am presuming that the telescope choice I had made was Stellarium's own plug-in and nothing whatever to do with ASCOM.

A few of the lessons learned:

I need to get the software working properly in daylight.

The computer/laptop needs a proper shelf and a proper seat to use it with a proper mouse on a proper mouse matt. I hate the touch pad on the laptop even though I use it most days. I'm just more of a mouse man.

A bright torch is an incredibly poor light source in a dark observatory.

The tailpiece of the 7" is much too close to the edge of the dome and the 2" star diagonal contacts the steering wheel brackets in some places. The brackets should have been cut off long before now but I feared a need for some change along the way. The brackets have to come off individually and be firmly held while I angle grind off the excess then smooth off the cuts to avoid injury. 

I need proper locking knobs on all the sliding, tube balance weights. Hex keys are a total pest in the dark!

I need to fit a proper finder on the 7" in two, proper, 3-point, stand-off rings. NOT the stupid CR150HD focuser shoe with the single sprung alignment pin. It can't cope with the diameter of the 8" tube.

A normal stepladder is far too big and clumsy for a modestly sized observatory housing a 7" refractor. The highest I need to be is at eye level with the Dec shaft when it is horizontal. Both stepladders will have to go.

There is far too much ventilation around the dome skirt. I need to fill in the octagon flats with arcs of plywood to make a full circle to help to reduce the draughts. Though the dome is 16 sided this is still much nearer to a circle than an octagon.

I need proper shelves and covered storage for everyday observatory stuff like eyepieces, extension tubes, Barlows and diagonals. Rummaging through plastic storage tubs on the floor is absolutely hopeless and damaging to the accessories.

The 7" refractor needs to be perfectly collimated in daylight. I have to use a "long series" hex driver on an extension bar just to reach the collimation screws in the bottom of the fixed dewshield. I should add tubular[?] extensions to the screw heads to allow effortless finger adjustment.

I need to know the precise position of the tube balance weights on the 7" when I'm fitting the binoviewer. The Moon was huge [and rather soft] with the binoviewer's default 2.8x GPC [glass path corrector] even with 26mm EPs. Very little chromatic aberration visible even on the limb. The Binoviewer image looks promising but needs much more work to be used properly.

Have everything I need up in the dome before I start. Not down in the shed nor upstairs indoors! I need to print a list and have a standard routine. Though a bit of practice will help enormously. I had lots of stuff stored elsewhere while working on the [year long] dome build. Much of it had not been touched for what seems like ages.

The IH2 [Intelligent Handset AWR drive control paddle] and its horribly stiff cable needs to be fully mobile. I had fixed it to the north side of the pier thinking that would be best. That meant I could not center objects from the EP in the absence of computer control. The four different speed, AWR drives are excellent in practice but need the handset at the eyepiece. There are several tracking speeds as well all available from the handset.

What I did like: The space available when the big stepladders have gone.

The trapdoor was okay to walk on when closed but without any light I was constantly terrified of falling through the usual big hole in the floor. It was far too heavy and too much trouble to repeatedly open and close the hatch while I was working on the dome. So I left it latched up for most of the time. Plans to have trapdoor counterweights on cables have not been applied yet and may not even be practical.

Without the building ladders dragging on the rubber skirt the dome was acceptably manageable in rotation. Practice will aim the slit more accurately at bright objects. This is not as easy as it sounds due to the considerable offset of the telescope on its mounting.

As I struggled with pointing the big 7" refractor OTA I was wishing I had the folded OTA on the mounting. Inside the dome it would not be subject to the optics dewing as it is outside. It would solve all the problems of the dome being slightly too small for the "long version" of the 7". Moreover, the folded version would not lose collimation when left permanently on the mounting. I was removing the objective every time when I was observing outside.

Yes the big scope is impressive and traditional and it just clears the dome. But it is bulky and unwieldy in use. It's huge leverage makes overriding the wormwheel clutches all too easy. Changing an eyepiece or diagonal seriously changes the tube balance. The Goto drives insist on using computer slews only. Or they will lose their bearings on the sky. Since they work by counting the turns of the stepper motors.  It takes considerable patience to wait minutes for a long slew! When they actually work!

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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