Post by howie1 on Aug 28, 2017 3:13:30 GMT
We all have them! You do the same checks and setups but absolutely nothing goes right! It's a long tale of woe, posted so you can have a laugh at my expense! LOL!
Last Saturday the weather, and the evening forecast, was great ... so headed out the to Lake.
But the Astro "Gods" just weren't having a bar of it! Here's the list of things which went wrong.
1. Normally 1hr 10 minutes to get across town and to the Lake. I left at my usual 3:45pm. I always leave then as (a) it allows a stop at town near the Lake to grab dinner to take out there for later; (b) the access gate at the Lake says it closes promptly at 5:30pm. However, I've never ever actually seen it closed (even when leaving at midnight!) .... but you never know, so I always aim to get there before 5:30pm! So on the motorway with no exits in sight, traffic slows then ends up a parking lot. Never saw what actually held it all up, but it made me late and so I did not have time to stop for Subway ... just drove straight to the Lake. Got there at 5:35pm. What do you know? First time I have ever seen it closed! There's an intercom thing there so I used it and the guy told me they'd finally fixed the gate about a week ago! He knew of the Astro club so luckily buzzed open the gate!
2. Setting up, the eFocuser didn't work. Normally, as the battery dies, I 'see' it as I have to turn the 'speed' knob up to 'fast' in order to get any focusing going as the battery juice dies. Not this time. Totally dead. Think something in the box of equipment must have pressed on the button and drained the battery. I don't have a tiny allen key to undo the shaft. So I used my pocket knife to undo the focus motor's mounting plate so I could use the focus knob.
3. Then this bloke and his missus drive up who were into nightscape photography. He showed me his websites photos. His shots were simply stunning, not only for nightscape but also daytime shots. But ... man ... I thought I liked a chat! This bloke went on for about an hour! No real problem though, as now it was nice and dark.
4. The SharpCap Polar Alignment went the best, and fastest I've ever gotten it! Normally it takes about 2 minutes and I stop when about less than 10 arc minutes accuracy. Saturday, it started at about 30 arc minutes error and on adjusting just the AZ bolt it read something crazy like 6 arc seconds error! Sweeeeeet! However, normally when slewing to the one star alignment I have ALWAYS had the alignment star within the FOV on my Canon Liveview screen. Not this time. I could look down the tube centreline and see the first star was miles off! I have absolutely no idea why that was given I did what I always do when levelling and so on and so forth! Anyway, I did the one star alignment.
5. Slewed to the first target and it was not in the FOV! The air turned blue! Dumb a**e I said to myself ... being that far off on a single star alignment, of course I should have done at least a two star alignment! So started a two star alignment to fix it all up. On slewing to the first star the mount pointed the tube down at the ground! No idea why! The air turned blue again. Shutdown and started all over again! This time it all went well.
6. So I had wanted to continue testing my Lightroom auto process. Normally, you highlight all the previous nights shots in Lightroom's Library, then right click > flag all, then press delete and it deletes them all. Not tonight! I tried about 10 times, including restarting Lightroom, but every time it would only delete one shot at a time. Ended up rebooting the laptop to fix that problem. After that, omega centauri worked fine with the auto LR process. Whew! But on slewing to the next target, the table with the laptop and iPad started to lift off the ground. No kidding! I'd heard the trees rustling while doing that second setup. But, by now the wind was howling! I put the laptop on the ground and packed up the table as I was scared it was going to take off. I could see the OTA bouncing around on top of the mount!
7. About an hour later it was good to start again. This time, on slewing to the suggested alignment star, once again it wasnt in the FOV! Many expletives uttered once again! Looking up, the entire half of the sky in that direction was cloud! Had to choose another star for the alignment. Got a great M20 shot, but then on slewing to the nearby Pillars of Creation I could see clouds all over the image. Yup, that cloud was moving to cover everything. About ten minutes later, all I could see was a patch of clear sky around the SCP ... but that was about it.
So I packed up. In five hours out there, hungry and cold, not including over an hour 45min drive there and facing a tad over an hour to drive home, I'd actually gotten about half an hour of EAA in!
That night just wasn't meant to be!
Last Saturday the weather, and the evening forecast, was great ... so headed out the to Lake.
But the Astro "Gods" just weren't having a bar of it! Here's the list of things which went wrong.
1. Normally 1hr 10 minutes to get across town and to the Lake. I left at my usual 3:45pm. I always leave then as (a) it allows a stop at town near the Lake to grab dinner to take out there for later; (b) the access gate at the Lake says it closes promptly at 5:30pm. However, I've never ever actually seen it closed (even when leaving at midnight!) .... but you never know, so I always aim to get there before 5:30pm! So on the motorway with no exits in sight, traffic slows then ends up a parking lot. Never saw what actually held it all up, but it made me late and so I did not have time to stop for Subway ... just drove straight to the Lake. Got there at 5:35pm. What do you know? First time I have ever seen it closed! There's an intercom thing there so I used it and the guy told me they'd finally fixed the gate about a week ago! He knew of the Astro club so luckily buzzed open the gate!
2. Setting up, the eFocuser didn't work. Normally, as the battery dies, I 'see' it as I have to turn the 'speed' knob up to 'fast' in order to get any focusing going as the battery juice dies. Not this time. Totally dead. Think something in the box of equipment must have pressed on the button and drained the battery. I don't have a tiny allen key to undo the shaft. So I used my pocket knife to undo the focus motor's mounting plate so I could use the focus knob.
3. Then this bloke and his missus drive up who were into nightscape photography. He showed me his websites photos. His shots were simply stunning, not only for nightscape but also daytime shots. But ... man ... I thought I liked a chat! This bloke went on for about an hour! No real problem though, as now it was nice and dark.
4. The SharpCap Polar Alignment went the best, and fastest I've ever gotten it! Normally it takes about 2 minutes and I stop when about less than 10 arc minutes accuracy. Saturday, it started at about 30 arc minutes error and on adjusting just the AZ bolt it read something crazy like 6 arc seconds error! Sweeeeeet! However, normally when slewing to the one star alignment I have ALWAYS had the alignment star within the FOV on my Canon Liveview screen. Not this time. I could look down the tube centreline and see the first star was miles off! I have absolutely no idea why that was given I did what I always do when levelling and so on and so forth! Anyway, I did the one star alignment.
5. Slewed to the first target and it was not in the FOV! The air turned blue! Dumb a**e I said to myself ... being that far off on a single star alignment, of course I should have done at least a two star alignment! So started a two star alignment to fix it all up. On slewing to the first star the mount pointed the tube down at the ground! No idea why! The air turned blue again. Shutdown and started all over again! This time it all went well.
6. So I had wanted to continue testing my Lightroom auto process. Normally, you highlight all the previous nights shots in Lightroom's Library, then right click > flag all, then press delete and it deletes them all. Not tonight! I tried about 10 times, including restarting Lightroom, but every time it would only delete one shot at a time. Ended up rebooting the laptop to fix that problem. After that, omega centauri worked fine with the auto LR process. Whew! But on slewing to the next target, the table with the laptop and iPad started to lift off the ground. No kidding! I'd heard the trees rustling while doing that second setup. But, by now the wind was howling! I put the laptop on the ground and packed up the table as I was scared it was going to take off. I could see the OTA bouncing around on top of the mount!
7. About an hour later it was good to start again. This time, on slewing to the suggested alignment star, once again it wasnt in the FOV! Many expletives uttered once again! Looking up, the entire half of the sky in that direction was cloud! Had to choose another star for the alignment. Got a great M20 shot, but then on slewing to the nearby Pillars of Creation I could see clouds all over the image. Yup, that cloud was moving to cover everything. About ten minutes later, all I could see was a patch of clear sky around the SCP ... but that was about it.
So I packed up. In five hours out there, hungry and cold, not including over an hour 45min drive there and facing a tad over an hour to drive home, I'd actually gotten about half an hour of EAA in!
That night just wasn't meant to be!