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Thursday 16th 61/57F, 8.00 lots of blue but lots of cloud too. AWR drives died early on but came back on again after much flashing and thumping.
Seeing is not great. Tried white light at first but nothing very interesting. So swapped back to H-alpha. PST BF for proms. 2.6x GPC.
9.00 There is supposed to be a big prom at 8 o'clock [SE] but I can't see it in the brief periods between the clouds. Found the prom briefly nearer 7 o'clock but the AWR drives are cycling constantly on and off. It's certainly not the mains. The PS seems to remain on but its LED is flashing on and off. As is the red LED on the back of the AWR drive box. More and more cloud now.Captured lots of videos of the gorgeous prom but only a crap, fuzzy mess coming out of AS!3. It looked fine on the monitor! Albeit with some thermal agitation. I may have to go back to AS!2. I stuck with that for a long time when AS!3 wouldn't behave.
Further columnar eruptions north of the main billowing clouds. Cloud spoilt the only capture.
These first processed images are very poor considering what I am seeing on the monitor.
10.44. 65/60F. Still struggling with intermittent AWR drives and cloud. Returned to AS!2. No visible difference in image output.
AWR were quick to respond to an email. They think it is the power supply causing the problems. I have a replacement handy which I'd bought for the dew bands. I just need to swap the female jack for banana plugs. Or bare wires. I chose the latter as easiest.
I spent the day playing with the RA drive motor. First I tried moving it away from the wormwheel. Checked the balance of the telescope on the mounting unhindered. Swapped power supplies and measured the current with old and new PS. [The same.] Removed the belt drive pulleys. The motor was still noisy at times until it was just the bare motor running on the floor at slew speed. I didn't detect any problem with the pulleys or timing belt. Now I have to put it all back together to see if it still misbehaves.
10.44. 65/60F. Still struggling with intermittent AWR drives and cloud. Returned to AS!2. No visible difference in image output.
AWR were quick to respond to an email. They think it is the power supply causing the problems. I have a replacement handy which I'd bought for the dew bands. I just need to swap the female jack for banana plugs. Or bare wires. I chose the latter as easiest.
I spent the day playing with the RA drive motor. First I tried moving it away from the wormwheel. Checked the balance of the telescope on the mounting unhindered. Swapped power supplies and measured the current with old and new PS. [The same.] Removed the belt drive pulleys. The motor was still noisy at times until it was just the bare motor running on the floor at slew speed. I didn't detect any problem with the pulleys or timing belt. Now I have to put it all back together to see if it still misbehaves.
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