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Monday 6th May Even more cloudy and much windier than yesterday. Frequent complete overcast. Thought I'd see if I could do better with H-alpha than WL. No such luck. Very dark videos in SharpCap. Tried all the options without improvement. Ended up with TV lines on the image in Registax. Nice prom on the limb above the spot with a lower hedge below.
I am remembering to orient the camera correctly to match Gong-Ha N, S, E & W. This is so much easier with a highly visible sun spot to go by. Tried FireCap and it can't be used with 4k screens. The Layout button only provides a doubling of content size. Even with a 40mm eyepiece as a "magnifying glass" I couldn't read the microscopic text!
Tuesday 7th: Hail and rain showers which were not forecast. I left the dome shutters open and found the southerly floor wet on my return ten minutes later. Since I couldn't do any observing, nor imaging, I did something else. I spent some time going around screwing the observatory wall panels more firmly to the framework.
The extra screws in
the machined grooves will help to reinforce the building by multiple
triangulation. The so-called "stressed skin" effect saves me fitting
heavy diagonal braces. Cutting and fitting such braces to the frame of
an octagonal building is a geometrical nightmare of compound mitres! If
the braces don't fit perfectly then they do no good at all.I also tightened up the mounting base fork and the bearing box compressing, furniture nuts and studs.
The plywood dome panels are already getting warm and it isn't even summer yet. I keep thinking I could get away with white paint on the dome now. The dome is now all but invisible from the road and will soon be completely hidden by neighbour's trees and hedges.
Sage
green was an excellent choice for making the dome disappear against the
bare, background trees in winter. The view beyond the dome [from the
road] is grass or winter grass-like crops for miles. When the trees are
in leaf they form a solid background. Bright white paint would hopefully
lower the temperature differential between the inside and outside of
the dome. This should reduce the dome's effect on seeing conditions when
practising solar imaging. This will be the dome's first summer.Wed. 8th: Heavy cloud so I painted the cheap, "Olympic Standard barbel" counterweights with Hammerite Smooth white paint. A second coat might have been desirable for cosmetic reasons but I was too impatient to get them back onto the mounting. Hopefully they will now be more visible than rusty black iron in the darkness. I had already given the very rough exteriors a light cut at the very limit of my lathe's capacity on diameter. Even so I needed a reversed boring bar to reach around the outside from the tool post. Olympic Standard weights have a nominal 2" bore but it is a very loose 2" going on my limited experience. Some people happily pay more for a stainless steel counterweight than my entire mounting cost in raw [usually scrap] materials!
Click on any image for an enlargement.
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